$Id: DEVELOPMENT_ENVIRONMENT 23 2006-12-03 15:00:36Z raistlinthewiz $

SETTING DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT FOR KERNEL DEVELOPING PURPOSES

This document servers for developers explaining how to  setup a development environment who
wants to contribute the project.

The project has been developed with listed software above. You need most of them to develop
the project.

* gcc
* as (will be obsolete soon)
* nasm
* make
* mbchk (project uses grub for booting, this utility check is image is grub-valid boot image)
* BOCHS (x86 software emulator - testing for kernel mostly)
* unzip

Preparing the environment:
--------------------------
First make sure you meet all the software in your system. Try to use a latest BOCHS version
(can be downloaded from http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ ) 
Make sure that BIOS-bochs-latest (likely to be in /usr/share/bochs/) and vgabios (/usr/share/vgabios/) exists on your system.

Now open the bochsrc file in the kernel directory.
Find these lines and edit them according to your system	
* romimage: 
romimage: file="/usr/share/bochs/BIOS-bochs-latest", address=0xf0000

* vgaromimage:
vgaromimage: file="/usr/share/vgabios/vgabios.bin"

* floppya: 
floppya: 1_44="kernel.img", status=inserted (Be sure that the "kernel.img" part fits your output image's name which is configured via Makefile OUTPUT_IMAGE variable)

We're done with the bochs configuration now.
Time for compiling & running the system.
Change directory to kernel/

Give the command;
	make

If everything goes well, it'll say you so and give information about kernel.bin's grub compability

Now give the command which creates a kernel image avaible for booting
	make image

If again everything was fine, then you'r lucky enough to boot the kernel :)

First give the command
	chmod +x run
to make it a runnable file.

Then give the command
	./run

Now you should see the Bochs with GRUB. Select the image, the kernel is in front of you now!


Troubleshooting:

* make image does not work on my system
This is because of the some /dev/loop changes between 2.4 kernel and 2.6 kernel. Currently the build system on linux defaults to 2.6 and uses /dev/loop/0 for the loop device. If you're on a 2.4 kernel change all references of
/dev/loop/0
to
/dev/loop0

This will fix the image creation problem hopefully.