AstraKernel ~ A minimal ARM kernel for QEMU

AstraKernel is a minimal experimental kernel written in C and ARM assembly, designed to run on QEMU's VersatilePB (ARM926E) emulated platform. This project currently demonstrates how to bootstrap a system, set up the stack, zero the .bss section, and perform basic UART output (printing text to the serial console).

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  AstraKernel  v0.1.0
  Built May 15 2025 at 22:58:58
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  CPU: ARM926EJ-S @ 200MHz (simulated)
  RAM: 128MB SDRAM at 0x00000000

Welcome to your own little Astra world!
Type away, explore, have fun.

Features so far

• Simple ARM assembly startup code
• Memory-mapped UART output for terminal messages
• Runs under QEMU

Building

Native Build

Make sure you have an ARM cross-compiler installed (e.g., arm-none-eabi-gcc) and qemu-system-arm.

make

Important

make will clean, build, and run the kernel in QEMU. You can also run make qemu to run the kernel without cleaning or building it again.

Docker Build

If you have docker installed, you can also run AstraKernel through a docker container:

make docker

Important

make docker will pull from the most recent main commit from the upstream repository https://github.com/sanbox-science/AstraKernel.git. If you wish to use a local copy, you can run make docker-dev, which will copy all local build files into the repository.

Documentation

For more details about this kernel, refer to the AstraKernel Documentation.

Note

The manual is a work in progress and may not cover all features yet.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC License. See the LICENSE file for details.