The OSKit is a framework and a set of 34 component libraries oriented to operating systems, together with extensive documentation. By providing in a modular way not only most of the infrastructure "grunge" needed by an OS, but also many higher-level components, the OSKit's goal is to lower the barrier to entry to OS R&D and to lower its costs. The OSKit makes it vastly easier to create a new OS, port an existing OS to the x86 (or in the future, to other architectures supported by the OSkit), or enhance an OS to support a wider range of devices, file system formats, executable formats, or network services. The OSKit also works well for constructing OS-related programs, such as boot loaders or OS-level servers atop a microkernel.

For language researchers and enthusiasts, the OSKit lets them concentrate on the real issues raised by using advanced languages inside operating systems, such as Java, Lisp, Scheme, or ML--- instead of spending six months or years groveling inside ugly code and hardware. With the recent addition of extensive multithreading and sophisticated scheduling support, the OSKit also provides a nmodular platform for embedded applications, as well as a novel component-based approach to constructing entire operating systems.

Although the OSKit contains substantial machine-independent code, it currently only contains machine-dependent code for the Intel x86 and Digital DNARD (StrongArm SA-110 CPU). Ports to other platforms are being considered-- if you're interested, please contact us!

A handy development and debugging capability is the ability to run most kernels on top of Unix.

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