This fleet project is a lot of fun, combining a shiny new idea with an excuse to take a crack at a lot of classic problems.

The next layer after the startup code should be something to do with drivers and the low-level kernel apparatus, but it all felt a bit vague, so I decided to start with the C standard library interface and work my way down, letting that drive the rest of the kernel architecture.

There are dozens of free C library implementations available, but I have not been able to find one that will work for my project. I don’t want POSIX support, don’t need hardware portability, and won’t have a Unix-style system call interface underneath. And while I’m building this in the style of an embedded firmware project, it’s actually designed to run on a purely virtual machine, so I don’t need or want a lot of code dealing with legacy PC hardware.

Oh, well, I’m writing my own C library. Of course I’ll fill it in with a lot of existing components, but this architecture is apparently weird enough that the framework is up to me.

I did write the string library myself, though, because I thought it would be fun. There sure is a lot of weirdness in there – it’s been 23 years since I learned C, and I can’t say I had ever noticed the existence of strspn, strxfrm, or strcoll – but now I’ve written ’em and built test suites too.