Since the three-quarter term report, I have continued porting userland servers and apps. The app server is fully functional, as are Deskbar and Tracker and a few other apps. I also cross-compiled all of the basic development optional packages (GCC/Binutils, autotools, make, etc.) for x86_64. Another screenshot showing the current state of things is below:
I have continued to make good progress since my midterm report. All the kernel functionality except for user debugging is implemented, and I have ported a basic set of drivers, including PCI, disk drivers, BFS and PS/2 input. For most drivers, porting is just a matter of fixing compiler warnings. For some, there are 64-bit issues which make porting more difficult. For example, the USB stack will require a bit more work as it currently assumes that addr_t is 32-bit everywhere.
I have also made some progress in porting userland to x86_64. I currently have libroot, libbe, bash, and most of the command line utilities ported. I have got an interactive bash shell running on top of consoled (which is usually used to run gdb on if app_server crashes).
Since my quarter term report I have made a great deal of progress. The boot loader x86_64 support is finished, and the kernel can now be booted to the point of searching for the boot volume. A screenshot of this:
As I mentioned in my first blog post, I had exams until a couple of weeks ago, so I didn’t start working on my project properly until then. However, I am now working full time so I expect to make a lot more progress in the coming weeks.
So far I have made it possible to compile the kernel for x86_64 by adding stub implementations of all the architecture functions and fixing compilation errors/warnings (all architectures that Haiku supports at the moment are 32-bit, so there were various problems in the code when compiling for 64-bit).
My name is Alex, I am a first year computer science student with a strong interest in operating systems and low-level software. My GSoC project this year is to begin a port of Haiku to the x86_64 architecture. Almost all modern x86 CPUs have 64-bit support, therefore a port of Haiku will allow it to take full advantage of these CPUs. The GSoC coding period is almost certainly too little time to finish a port of the whole OS, however my plan is to have ported at least the boot loader, kernel and some modules/drivers.
