Programs and Libraries
Redox is a general-purpose operating system, thus can run any program.
Some programs are interpreted by a runtime for the program's language, such as a script running in the Ion shell or a Python program. Others are compiled into CPU instructions that run on a particular operating system (Redox) and specific hardware (e.g. x86 compatible CPU in 64-bit mode).
- In Redox, the binaries use the standard ELF ("Executable and Linkable Format") format.
Programs could directly invoke Redox system calls, but most call library functions that are higher-level and more comfortable to use. You link your program with the libraries it needs.
- Most C/C++ programs call functions in a C Standard Library (libc) such as
fopen. - Redox includes a Rust implementation of the standard C library called relibc. This is how programs such as Git and Python can run on Redox. relibc has some POSIX compatibility.
- Rust programs implicitly or explicitly call functions in the Rust standard library.
- The Rust libstd now includes an implementation of its system-dependent parts (such as file access and setting environment variables) for Redox, in
src/libstd/sys/redox. Most of libstd works in Redox, so many terminal-based Rust programs can be compiled for Redox.
The Redox Cookbook package system includes recipes (software ports) for compiling C, C++ and Rust programs into Redox binaries.
The porting of programs on Redox is done case-by-case, if a program just need small patches, the programmer can modify the Rust crate source code or add .patch files on the recipe folder, but if big or dirty patches are needed, Redox create a fork of it on GitLab and rebase for a while in the redox branch of the fork (some Redox forks use branches for different versions).