Building ikOS¶

ikOS is a set of .ik source files compiled to a single Intel HEX image by the ik8b toolchain. The entry point and import graph are rooted at boot.ik.

Prerequisites¶

The toolchain, vendored as a submodule at tools/ikide (the IKIDE tree, which bundles the ik8b compiler and its standard library). After cloning, populate it and build the compiler binary once:
```
git submodule update --init --recursive
make toolchain
```

Build and run¶

From the ikOS directory, everything runs through make:

make build            # compile to build/boot.hex
make run              # compile and simulate (LIMIT=N overrides the cap)
make test             # run the Rhai test suite (tests/*.rhai) via the IDE runner
make docs             # build this manual

make invokes the submodule’s ik8b with IK8B_STD_PATH set so the import kernel/... paths and the standard library resolve, and writes the image to build/boot.hex. run additionally simulates the image in the ik8b/ik8bvm simulator.

make test builds the IDE’s headless test runner from the submodule and runs every tests/*.rhai suite through it (the same engine as IKIDE’s Run → Run Tests). The suite compiles boot.ik in-process, drives the shell over the virtual UART and asserts on its replies, so no prior make build is needed; the command exits non-zero on any failure.

Drive the shell over the UART at 9600 baud (8N1). In the IKIDE breadboard, the UART tab speaks to the running image directly.

Choosing the target¶

The device is selected by the target declaration at the top of boot.ik:

target atmega328p

atmega32 and atmega328p are supported out of the box. The SRAM map in kernel/memory.ik is chosen to fit both, and arch/timer.ik is a small per-target HAL — a ? target == ... block per device that programs Timer0. Porting to another classic AVR means adding its timer block there (and, if its ADC registers differ, the addresses used by the adc command).

Footprint¶

The image is tight: it fills nearly all of the 32 KB flash and uses a few hundred bytes of SRAM. make build prints a usage report (flash, SRAM, EEPROM) after each build; watch it when adding features.