Osdev-Notes

Assumed Knowledge

This book is written for beginners in operating system development, but some prior experience with programming is recommended. It is not intended to teach you C, or how to use a compiler or linker.

Code can have bugs and freestanding code can be hard (or impossible) to debug in some cases. Some hardware does not include serial ports, real CPUs can have bugs in hardware, or architectural quirks you’re unaware of that interfere with developing for them.

As such, below is a list of the recommended prior experience before continuing with this book:

• Intermediate understanding of the C programming language. Mastery is not required, but you should be very familiar with the ins and outs of the language, especially pointers and pointer arithmetic.
• You should be comfortable compiling and debugging code in userspace. GDB is recommended as several emulators provide a GDB server you can use to step through your kernel.
• Knowledge and experience using common data structures like intrusive linked lists. While we may use array notation at several points to help visualize what’s going on, you won’t want to place arbitrary limits on your kernel by using fixed size arrays.

If you feel confident in your knowledge of the above, please read on! If not, don’t be discouraged. There are plenty of resources available for learning, and you can always come back later.

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