The team blog. Find the very latest news here.
Cosmos is written in C#. Cosmos developers including kernel developers stay in C#. However our IL2CPU libraries have to deal with assembly, and the few of us who deal with the compiler code of course muck about with X86. Previously we had our own class based "inline compiler". It worked reasonably well, but I always wanted something more. Finally I took the time, and I am affectionately calling it X# (from X86).
A video showing user kit installation and creation of a new bootable project is now online.
With luck, this weekend we will have stepping and breakpoints fully enabled. Here is an updated screenshot with tracing.
Currently we have full trace logging over serial. Its useful, but very slow. We are working towards the ability to set breakpoints, do tracing, variable evaluations and more. Here is a small preview.
A picture from my Cosmos session in Cairo. Thanks to Ahmed Mahdy.
At EDC (April 13, 2008 - Cairo, Egypt) there is a Cosmos presentation.
A few days ago Frode successfully transmitted our first Ethernet packet! Now we are on to cleaning it up a bit and on to UDP.
Users of the dev kit now have the ability to deploy to USB devices directly. User kit users must wait for our next release.
I have updated the boot from USB instructions to be more clear. In addition I am working on building USB support directly into the user kit so it will be automatic, just like ISO or PXE.
Milestone 2 has been released. Numerous bug fixes, and an all new user kit.
It has been a while since our last post. So what are we doing? Is Cosmos still alive. Yes!
Cosmos is definitely in the wild now thanks to an article by Mary Jo Foley.
Short article and interview on Cosmos is now available on InfoQ.
Some more blogs about Cosmos, including quite a detailed review by Microsoft's Scott Hanselman.
Thanks to Joel for this.
Here are a few more Cosmos mentions in news, blogs, and forums.
C# has been a language with a mixed history but precise goals. Although the C# language definition is for some time an ISO standard, only a part of the Base Class Library (BCL), which contains the fundamental functions that are used by all C# programs (IO, User Interface, Web services, etc) is also standardized. Parts of the BCL have been patented by Microsoft, but that has not deterred developers from attempts at implementing the components that are standardized, in various forms (Mono and affiliated projects). What happens when you go beyond that? What happens when outside the language, you start to implement not a mere application platform, but an entire operating system around it? Brace yourselves, because there is not only Microsoft Research who has done this with Singularity, but at least two other projects doing the same; and they are doing this under opensource terms. A system based around a C# Kernel. In this article, we are looking at one of the two, Cosmos by asking Scott Balmos and Chad Hower about the project they are involved in.
A step by step tutorial with pictures by an end user showing how to boot Cosmos in Virtual PC. The ISO can be regenerated using the build wizard (F5 from within Visual Studio)
Cosmos has its very own page on Facebook. Become a fan. [jonathand]
