MutekH as Unix process quick start guide

This guide explain how to run MutekH embedded in a Unix process. This is the simplest way to run MutekH as it doesn't require any hardware platform.

Overview

The MutekH operation system is built on top of the Hexo hardware abstraction layer. It's composed of several modules and libraries.

When compiled to run embedded in a Unix process, minimal hardware ressource are needed: The host processor and unix process memory are used as execution platform and a simple TTY driver redirect output to the Unix terminal.

It enables running MutekH natively on the host processor. This configuration suffer from several limitations regarding available peripherals, but it is usefull to test and debug algorithms.

Getting the sources

The example below show how to run MutekH using this configuration, it only requires to get the MutekH source code.

The MutekH source code is fully configurable and can be tweaked to adapt hardware platform and application needs. Configuration is handled by a dedicated tool which check dependencies and other relationships between the large set of available configuration tokens.

svn co -r 1024 https://www-asim.lip6.fr/svn/mutekh/trunk/mutekh

Source tree is organized this way:

mutekh
|-- arch            contains hardware platforms modules for hexo
|-- cpu             contains processors modules for hexo
|-- doc             documentation
|-- drivers         device and filesystem drivers
|-- examples        Test and example programs
|-- gpct            container library, available as a separate project
|-- hexo            Hexo hardware abstraction layer
|-- libc            standard C library
|-- libm            standard math library
|-- libnetwork      netwotk stack
|-- libpthread      posix thread library
|-- libvfs          virtual File System
|-- mutek           hardware independant kernel code
|-- scripts         build system scripts
`-- tools           some usefull tools

More directories are actually available with other libraries and features.

Writing the example source code

Note: This example is available directly from examples/hello directory in source tree: trunk/mutekh/examples/hello

• Creating a new modules directory

  mkdir hello
  cd hello
  

• Writing the source code in hello.c

  #include <pthread.h>
  
  pthread_mutex_t m;
  pthread_t a, b;
  
  void *f(void *param)
  {
    while (1)
      { 
        pthread_mutex_lock(&m);
        printf("(%i) %s", cpu_id(), param);
        pthread_mutex_unlock(&m);
        pthread_yield();
      }
  }
  int main()
  {
    pthread_mutex_init(&m, NULL);
    pthread_create(&a, NULL, f, "Hello ");
    pthread_create(&b, NULL, f, "World\n");
  }
  

• Writing the Makefile

  objs = hello.o
  

Writing the MutekH configuration file

Our configuration file is named hello/config_emu. Details about configuration file is explained later. This configuration file describe the following things:

• The application license, used to check license consistency for modules in use,
• The target hardware platform and processor
• Use of the POSIX threads library
• Use of terminal output
• Declaration of a new "hello" modules

The MutekH source code is split in modules. We now have to declare our new module to have it compiled along with the kernel by the build system. As modules may be located out of the source tree, we have to specify the module directory.

# New source code module to be compiled
  CONFIG_MODULES examples/hello:%CONFIGPATH

# Application license
  CONFIG_LICENSE_APP_LGPL

# Platform types
  CONFIG_ARCH_EMU
  CONFIG_ARCH_EMU_LINUX

# Processor types
  CONFIG_CPU_X86_EMU

  ...

The complete configuration files are available here: trunk/mutekh/examples/hello/config_emu and trunk/mutekh/examples/hello/config_emu64. You must choose the right one depending on your host operating system and architecture.

Compiling the application along with MutekH

Simply type something like:

make CONF=examples/hello/config_emu

Once the compilation process has finished, the executable binary is available:

kernel-emu-x86-emu.out 

Execution

Simply execute the program as a normal unix executable:

$ ./kernel-emu-x86-emu.out
(0) Hello (0) World
(0) Hello (0) World
(0) Hello (0) World
(0) Hello (0) World
...

Other more advanced topics and guides are available from the Main page.