|'''''||
    .|'   ...'||
   ||   .|...|||  ..  .... 
 .|'    ||    || .' .|...|| 
||......|'|...||'|. || 
             .||. ||.'|...'

Zero Kernel is a tiny kernel implementation that was originally targeted for ARM Corex-M microcontrollers. Reasons to start this project was that most of currently available RTOSes for M0 were bit bloat and secondly I found architectures based on ARMv6-M to be quite challenging platforms for RTOS/kernel development. Especially when ARMv6-M is compared to ARMv7-M used in M4 core or any Cortex-A cores using real ARM architectures.

One of the original goals of Zero Kernel was to make it CMSIS-RTOS compliant where possible, as some concepts of Zeke were not CMSIS compliant from the begining. However scope changed early and the kernel is no more CMSIS compatible at any level. Currently Zeke is no moving towards POSIX-like system.

• For user applications
  • Dynamic prioritizing pre-emptive scheduling with penalties to prevent starvation
  • System call based kernel services
  • Standard user application separation by using POSIX processes
  • Many-to-Many thread scheduling implemented at kernel level
• Scalability
  • Adjustable footprint by compilation flags
• File Systems
  • Complete file system abstraction (VFS)
  • freeBSD-like device file interface
• Kernel
  • Fully pre-emptible kernel mode
  • freeBSD-like sysctl interface

• Coming "soon":
  • SD card support and file system X (tbd)
• ARM11/Raspberry Pi port ongoing

+-----------+-----------------------+
| HAL       | Status                |
+-----------+-----------------------+
| ARM11     | OK                    |
+-----------+-----------------------+
| BCM2835   | Boots                 |
+-----------+-----------------------+

To successfully compile Zeke, you'll need the following packages/tools:

• make >3.8
• gcc-arm-none-eabi
• llvm-3.3
• clang 3.3
• binutils
• bash
• cloc (for stats)

doc-book target:

• LaTeX + some packages
• latexmk
• gnuplot

Doxygen targets:

• Doxygen
• man for viewing man pages

• configure- Set defaults for files in config dir
• make - Compile the kernel
• make test - Compile unit tests
• make clean - Clean all targets

Run make help for full list of targets and compilation flags.

Qemu from rpi branch of git@github.com:Torlus/qemu.git repository seems to work best for BCM2835/Raspberry Pi version of Zeke.

../src/configure --prefix=[PATH TO BIN] --target-list=arm-softmmu,arm-linux-user,armeb-linux-user --enable-sdl
make -j4 && sudo make install

Zeke should boot just fine with, practically, any bootloader that is capable of loading a linux image. However Zeke only supports ATAGs for gathering device information so some older bootloader may work better. Though ATAGs are optional so basically any bootloader should work if you compile Zeke without configATAG.