async-kernel

Mostly 0BSD-licensed RV64GC Rust kernel for Qemu's virt machine

Files not made by me (and possibly not 0BSD-licensed) are kernel/kernel_main/asm/trap.S.

Based off my earlier project rust-0bsd-riscv-kernel. I learnt some things from it, so this kernel is designed in a different way.

Code flow

Compilation

1. kernel/kernel_main gets compiled with usize::MAX - 0x8000_0000 as its base address. This means that all kernel routines will think that they are located in the last 0x8000_0000 bytes of memory.
2. The code in resulting ELF file gets dumped using objcopy into kernel_payload.bin. The first byte is at virtual address usize::MAX - 0x8000_0000. This is done in link.sh
3. kernel/kernel_bootloader is compiled with its base address at 0x8020_0000. It uses include_bytes! to include kernel_payload.bin in its final binary.
4. qemu is launched, with the binary resulting from the compilation of kernel_bootloader as the kernel image.

Code flow

1. A platform bootloader runs. It loads the kernel image and puts it at physical address 0x8020_0000. It also jumps to firmware code (OpenSBI). In our case, QEMU fulfills this role.
2. OpenSBI runs before the kernel. This is provided by the platform too.
3. OpenSBI jumps to 0x8020_0000. The code there is at kernel/kernel_bootloader/boot.S.
4. The pre_main function is run. It sets up a small heap based on hardcoded memory addresses. It creates a page table where physical memory is mapped to the higher half of the virtual address space.
5. In addition, pre_main maps the kernel image in the same page table to usize::MAX - 0x8000_0000.
6. pre_main jumps to usize::MAX - 0x8000_0000. This is kernel_main::boot, a naked function this time.
7. Rest of the kernel gets called by kernel_main::boot. TODO: Process execution and hart management