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1.12.0
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KallistiOS git master
Independent SDK for the Sega Dreamcast
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KallistiOS[^1] is a development library and unikernel operating system for the Sega Dreamcast[^1] licensed under a permissive software license.
KallistiOS is a modular monolithic kernel, like Linux or FreeBSD. This means that there is a kernel library which you link with your own code. This library (libkallisti.a) contains the whole core OS functionality. You may also enable dynamically loaded modules which will link into your program at runtime and add extra functionality like new VFS modules, new peripheral device support, image loader plugins, etc. The possibilities are limited only by your patience with adding enough exports to support the modules. :wink:
Note that this is different from previous versions of KOS which had an actual "OS mode". The new dynamic loader system is architected somewhat like the AmigaOS's library system but it makes no pretenses whatsoever to being an actual process management system.
What KallistiOS is primarily:
What KallistiOS provides optionally:
What KallistiOS is NOT:
(# There is an MMU module for the DC port, but nothing really uses it at this point.)
If you're looking for all these features in a solid proven kernel, then look no further than Linux or NetBSD. On the other hand, if you want a simple kernel that you can grok in a few hours and use simply, use KallistiOS!
As an aside, if you are interested in a skeleton version of KOS that uses the MMU and memory protection, a real process model, etc, check out KOS-MMU. It's not being worked on any more but it has some interesting code in it and is a clean example of a simple OS. Most of the interesting code from KOS-MMU was merged into KOS 1.1.x, 1.2.x, and 2.0.0.
Please read LICENSE.md for more information about this subject. The FAQ also contains an informative "licensing" section.
If in doubt, please contact us. If you want to use KOS in a project, we'd love to hear from you anyway!
Building KallistiOS from source entirely requires two things:
sh-elf. An arm-eabi toolchain can optionally be used.A toolchain-building script is included to build the cross-compiler. See the dc-chain documentation for more information on installing the toolchain.
If building KallistiOS to target NAOMI, additionally you will need to install libelf (and the development package, if applicable) for your host environment (or modify the utils/naomibintool Makefile to not use libelf and to define NO_LIBELF for building that tool).
kos-ports is a package manager and repository of various useful libraries that have been ported to KOS.
Addons are additional libraries that are kept as optional but were written specifically for and maintained alongside KOS unlike kos-ports.
Utilities contains various PC-side tools used to assist development.
Examples on using KOS, it's addons, and various kos-ports libs.
Building KOS itself is actually quite simple, especially if you don't want to add new sections for yourself. Make a copy of doc/environ.sh.sample and call it environ.sh in your main KOS dir. Edit this file to match your compiler setup and any other preferences you may have. Also make sure you set the architecture that you want to build for here.
Note that unlike previous versions, there is only one environ.sh file no matter what platform you use. The common pieces and most of the platform specific pieces have been pulled out so that you don't have to deal with them anymore.
After you have a working environ script, run it with 'source environ.sh' and run your make program. For BSD people this may be 'gmake', otherwise it will probably be just 'make'. It should be done after a few minutes. If something goes wrong, please check the FAQ; if that fails, you may seek support though several options. I recommend putting the 'source' line above into your shell's .rc/.login.
This process should work (and has been tested) under Linux, BSD, Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS. It is very doubtful that it will work in any non-*nix environment.
All KOS versions are composed of three sections: major, minor, micro. Major revisions are generally something that changes the OS fundamentally, or when we wait several years between releases :smiley:. The minor version number is used to denote a development series. This gets incremented basically whenever we feel that it is relevant to do so. Finally, the micro version denotes a sequence in the development series. 1.1.0 would be the first snapshot of the 1.1 development series.
And as always, if you want to be on the bleeding edge, use the Git repository hosted at SourceForge.
If you are planning on doing your own hacking and potentially submitting patches for me to include, then I'd very much appreciate it if you would do this against the Git repository rather than a release tree. The general workflow to do this is to add/commit the changes to your local git repo and then send a patch for the revisions in question like so (where n is the number of commits you have made):
git format-patch -n
This will write a number of .patch files to the current directory for the n most recent commits you have made. You can then upload those patches to the SourceForge patch tracker to get them to us. You should ensure that your git setup is relatively sane and that you have your name/email address filled in properly, or I will probably reject your patches. You should also provide useful commit messages, with a summary on the first line to make it easier on me later.
In addition, for those used to working with pull requests on GitHub, I accept those as well. I assume you know how to make things work that way if you wish to go that route. The mirror of the repository at GitHub is currently at the following url: https://github.com/KallistiOS/KallistiOS
I don't guarantee that any patch will get included (especially if your patch contains a lot of reformatting, sloppy coding, things at cross-purposes with the primary thrust of KOS, etc), but I will make an effort to at least examine and comment on any submitted patches.
Code should be relatively well formatted, especially in the core library/kernel portions. There are tools out there to help you reformat your code so that it will match the rest of KOS a lot more nicely. One such tool is Artistic Style (http://astyle.sourceforge.net/). Here's a nice set of flags to feed to the astyle program to make your code match up nicely with the rest of KOS:
I don't guarantee that this produces the exact same formatting as the rest of the code, but it should be pretty much correct (and I won't reject your patch for styling if you use this set of flags to astyle on it). You might also want to take a look at the coding_style.txt file (in the same directory as this README in the KOS tree) for some rationale for most of that formatting stuff. Note that some of that has changed over time (mainly when the maintainer of KOS changes), but it is still mostly right. :wink:
KallistiOS began its life as a hobby operating system written by Megan Potter in the late 90s, not for the Sega Dreamcast, but for i386 PCs. Megan later became interested in hacking her new Sega Dreamcast console, and along with Jordan DeLong and Mike "Tursi" Brent, began work on the libdream library by adapting the work pioneered by Marcus Comstedt. Stars and Ghetto Pong then become the first publicly released Dreamcast homebrew demo and game.
Later, they began discussing the idea of writing a real embedded operating system for Dreamcast, and KallistiOS was reborn. None of the original code survives in the Dreamcast version, but the concepts and name still do.
Depending on whether you wish to see the fnords, you can pronounce the name Kallisti-O's (like a cereal) or Kallisti O. S. (like an operating system). We like the former since it's silly to be so serious most of the time :smiley:. Kallisti means "to the fairest" in Greek. In Greek mythology, this word was inscribed upon a golden apple and thrown into the banquet of the gods by Eris, the goddess of discord and strife, in retaliation for being disinvited.
The goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite then fought over who was deserving of the title fairest and thus possession of the apple. Zeus, wishing to stay out of the matter, asked Paris, prince of Troy, to arbitrate the disagreement. Each goddess attempted to bribe Paris with a reward for choosing her. Paris chose Aphrodite, which won him the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth, who was Helen, Queen of Sparta. The Greeks sailed to Troy to retrieve her, starting the 10 year Trojan War.
This landed Eris the title of matriarch of a silly religion called Discordianism, to which the KallistiOS name pays homage. If you want a short abbreviation, you can also refer to it as KOS, which can be pronounced k-oss (like chaos) :smiley:.
If you think that is silly, well, the original suggestion for the name of the operating system was HuevOS, and the mascot was an egg wearing a sombrero and riding a surfboard. 😃 Eventually, though, KallistiOS was chosen due to the authors' interest in Discordianism.
The development of KallistiOS, credited to Megan Potter's Cryptic Allusion organization, accelerated through the end of 2000 and into 2001, and by May 2001 Dreamcast dev pioneers Cryptic Allusion, Ganksoft, Moving Target Software Design, and AndrewK/Napalm collaborated to design, produce, and distribute a collection of homebrew games and demos called DC Tonic at the E3 Electronics Entertainment Exposition. The demo disc was a hit and both the demos and the KallistiOS software caught the attention and praise of Sega themselves.
Ports of KallistiOS once existed for the existed for the Gameboy Advance[^2], PlayStation 2[^2], and Intel[^2] ia32 platforms, although none were particularly complete. At this time, only the Sega Dreamcast portion remains, but the project architecture still exists to add additional consoles at later time.
There are no other supported platforms after KOS 2.0.0. They were all pretty much broken and unmaintained anyway, so they were removed shortly after the release of KOS 2.0.0.
Please read the other documents in the "doc" directory for more information. Also check the FAQ if there is something you were wondering.
Also, please take note of our new web URL (below). We have moved hosting to SourceForge for all console-related things.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cadcdev/
[^1]: Note that this name is not to be confused or associated with either the professional development company Kalisto Software* or the cracking group "Kalisto".
"Nintendo" and "Gameboy Advance" are registered trademarks of Nintendo of America Kalisto Software is a registered trademark of Kalisto Software, Inc. "PlayStation" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America "Intel" is a registered trademark of Intel, Inc. Any other trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.
1.12.0