genode/repos/base-foc/doc/foc.txt

                     ===================================
                     Genode on the Fiasco.OC microkernel
                     ===================================


                            Stefan Kalkowski


Fiasco.OC is a microkernel developed by the OS group of the TU-Dresden. It's
an object-oriented capability-based system for x86, ARM and PowerPC platforms.

This document provides brief instructions about downloading, building and
booting the Fiasco.OC version of Genode.


Prerequisites
#############

You need certain tools to use the Fiasco.OC build system. On Debian/Ubuntu
systems you have to install the following packages:

! apt-get install make gawk pkg-config subversion patch

Moreover, you need to download and install the tool-chain used by Genode. Have
a look at this page:

:[http://genode.org/download/tool-chain]:
  Genode tool-chain

If you want to use the so called run-scripts in Genode, a mechanism that
automates building, integration and testing of components, you have to install
the following, additional package:

! apt-get install expect


Building the Fiasco.OC version of Genode
########################################

The current version of Genode is available at the public subversion repository:

:http://genode.org/download/subversion-repository:
  Information about accessing the Genode public subversion repository

After you've fetched the Genode source tree from the subversion repository, or
downloaded the latest release tar archive, you need the Fiasco.OC source code,
its kernel-bindings, additional bootstrap tools etc. To simplify that step,
you can use a Makefile in the 'base-foc' directory of the Genode source tree,
just do:

! cd base-foc
! make prepare

This will install all necessary third-party source code in the 'contrib' folder.

For the vesa driver on x86 the x86emu library is required and can be downloaded
and prepared by invoking the following command from within the 'libports'
directory:

! make prepare PKG=x86emu

Now, go to a directory where you want the Genode/Fiasco.OC build directory to
remain. Use the helper script in the 'tool' directory of the Genode
source tree to create the initial build environment. You need to state the
build directory you want to create, and the hardware architecture to run
Fiasco.OC/Genode on. Choose 'foc_x86_32', 'foc_x86_64', or 'foc_pbxa9'
depending on whether you want to build for the 32-bit or 64-bit X86
architecture, or for ARMs Cortex-A9.

! <genode-dir>/tool/create_builddir foc_x86_32 \
!     BUILD_DIR=<build-dir>

Now, go to the newly created build directory and type make:

! cd <build-dir>
! make

This will build the Fiasco.OC kernel, its bootstrap code, and every Genode component,
that runs on top of Fiasco.OC.

If you just want to give Genode/Fiasco.OC a try, you can call e.g.: the demo run-script
instead of building everything:

! cd <build-dir>
! make run/demo


Running L4Linux on top of Genode
################################

To get the L4Linux running on top of Genode, you have to change to the
'ports-foc' repository within your Genode source tree and do a 'make prepare':

! cd ports-foc
! make prepare

This will fetch the currently supported version from the L4Linux subversion
repository, and apply a patch to it, that is needed to execute it on top of
Genode.

Before compiling L4Linux for Genode/Fiasco.OC you have to integrate the 'ports-foc'
repository into your build environment. Therefore edit the 'etc/build.conf' file
in your build directory, and uncomment the following line:

! REPOSITORIES += $(GENODE_DIR)/repos/ports-foc

After that you can build and run L4Linux by issuing:

! make run/l4linux

in your build directory. This run-script boots a single L4Linux instance into
a minimal console environment. After booting completes, the run-scripts tries
to download the Genode project webpage via the 'wget' tool within the L4Linux
environment. If all wents fine the run-script completes successfully.


Integration of Fiasco.OC with Genode
####################################

If you don't want the Genode build system to build the Fiasco.OC kernel for
you, but you want to provide your own version, you have to state in the
'etc/foc.conf' file within your build directory, where to find it:

! L4_BUILD_DIR = <l4re-build-dir>
! KERNEL       = <fiasco.oc-kernel-binary>

The first variable states where to find the kernel bindings (the L4RE build
directory), the second one states where your kernel binary can be found.
After adding these variable to the file, you have to do a full cleanup
in your build directory to ensure, that the right bindings are used:

! make cleanall

From now on, run-scripts will use your provided kernel.


Further Information
###################

:[http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/fiasco]:
  Official website for the Fiasco.OC microkernel.