The redshirt operating system is an experiment to build some kind of operating-system-like environment where executables are all in Wasm and are loaded from an IPFS-like decentralized network.

See the docs/introduction.md file for an introduction.

How to test

Important: At the moment, most of the compilation requires a nightly version of Rust. See also https://github.com/tomaka/redshirt/issues/300. Your C compiler must be recent enough to be capable of compiling to WebAssembly. This is for example the case for clang 9. See also https://github.com/tomaka/redshirt/issues/257.

You also need to install the wasm32-wasi target, as the Wasm modules are compiled for Wasi, and the rust-src component in order to build the standalone kernel.

rustup toolchain install --target=wasm32-wasi nightly
rustup component add --toolchain=nightly rust-src

There are two binaries available in this repository:

• The "CLI kernel" is a regular binary that executes Wasi programs and leverages functionalities from the host operating system.
• The freestanding kernel is a bare-metal kernel.

For the CLI kernel:

# Loads the module whose hash is FWMwRMQCKdWVDdKyx6ogQ8sXuoeDLNzZxniRMyD5S71 and executes it.
# This should print "hello world".
cargo +nightly run -- --module-hash FWMwRMQCKdWVDdKyx6ogQ8sXuoeDLNzZxniRMyD5S71

For the freestanding kernel:

cd kernel/standalone-builder
cargo +nightly run -- emulator-run --emulator qemu --target x86_64-multiboot2

Repository structure

Short overview of the structure of the repository:

• core is a crate containing all the core infrastructure of interpreting Wasm and inter-process communication. It is meant to become #![no_std]-compatible.
• docs contains a description of what redshirt is and how it works. Start with docs/introduction.md.
• interfaces contains crates that provide definitions and helpers for Wasm programs to use (examples: tcp for TCP/IP, window for windowing).
• kernel contains the kernel binaries, plus crates that implement interfaces using the host's environment (e.g.: implements the tcp interface using Linux's or Window's TCP/IP).
• modules contains Wasm programs.

Contributing

Please note that so far this is mostly a personal project. I reserve the right to change anything at any time, including the license.