Redox OS for powerpc?

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Hello everyone!

I’m new here and really like your project! I like Rust and love to see it in more and more development areas.
I know that Redox is still in early development stages, but I’d like to know how it behaves with powerpc support. I’ve got an old Apple MacMini with powerpc processor. As it is mostly unused, I’d like it to become a testing machine.

I’m becoming a student of informatics in the next months, thus I haven’t got much experience in low level development. But I already read many articles about microcontroller programming, OS architectures and so on. I understand the basics although some things like paging are still very confusing to me in their implementation.

Anyway, I already skimmed several OSes’ boot code and understand that for every platform, there are certain initial memory settings you have to set. I think that for Redox OS, x86 and arm are already available. I’d like to know how difficult it would be (especially for me as a beginner) to get involved into Redox OS development and write the powerpc parts of the kernel. Then I could work on my old MacMini and try to get Redox OS working there.
I don’t expect Redox OS to run stable on powerpc, but I’d just like to learn something about OS development and think that powerpc might be a good entry point.

I hope something can help me and look forward to reading your answers!
Cheers
Sören

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Hi, I was digging around in the kernel and found a few areas that I believe would have to be added for PowerPC.

The first is you need to create a target for PowerPC. That is if rust can be compiled for it.

Then in the kernel under arch, you will have to implement what the x86_64 does, but specific for PowerPC.

Here again, you need to implement this for PowerPC.

Then you need to set up a linker for powerpc.

I hope this gives you a direction to start in.

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It would also be nice to have Redox running on Power9, on a Raptor Computing Talos II or Blackbird. Raptor Computing Systems::Products