Building sanos from source

To build sanos from source you first need to download sanos-src-x.x.x.zip from the download page and unzip it into a directory (e.g. c:\sanos).

The source code for sanos is compiled under Windows. I use Microsoft Visual C version 7 (i.e. Visual Studio.NET 2002) to compile the source code. The boot sector is assembled using NASM. A copy of the NASM assembler is distributed with the source release of sanos (in the tools directory).

You can build sanos from a command line using the Makefile in the root directory of the sanos distribution. If your Visual Studio is not placed in its default location you need to have your path setup for Visual Studio. This is most easily done by running vsvars32.bat. This file is usually located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Vc7\bin.

The Makefile compiles and links all the code and builds a boot floppy image in img/sanos.flp. See here for booting and installing this image.

Building sanos using NMAKE

The root directory of the sanos source distribution contains a Makefile, that can be used to build sanos. After running vsvars32.bat you can build sanos by running:

c:\sanos> nmake sanos

This will build all the files in the bin directory. You can then build different install medias from these files:

nmake bootdisk
Builds a floppy boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.flp)
nmake boothd
Builds a 100 MB virtual harddisk boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.vmdk). This image can be used to boot from in PC emulators supporting vmdk format (VMware and Qemu).
nmake bootcd
Builds a ISO cd boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.iso). This requires mkisofs to be installed in the tools directory.
nmake netbootimg
Builds a network boot image in the img directory (img\sanos.0). This image can be used for making sanos boot over the network using PXE.
nmake sdkdisk
Builds a virtual disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.vmdk). This image contains sanos, the SDK for building applications under sanos, and the source code for sanos.
nmake minimal
Builds a floppy boot disk image in the img directory (img\minimal.flp) with a minimal configuration of Sanos.

Building sanos using other versions of Visual Studio

You can use the following versions of Visual Studio for building sanos:

Microsoft Visual Studio.NET (2002/2003) (nmake MSVC=7 sanos).
Microsoft Visual Visual Studio 2005 (nmake MSVC=8 sanos).
Microsoft Visual Visual Studio 2008 (nmake MSVC=9 sanos).
Microsoft Visual Visual Studio 2010 (nmake MSVC=10 sanos).

You can also use the Express (i.e. "free") versions of Visual Studio.

Building sanos from the Visual Studio IDE

You can also build sanos from within the Visual Studio IDE. Go to to the build directory and double click sanos.sln. After Visual Studio has started right click the image project and select 'Set as Startup Project'.

Right click the sanos solution in the project pane and select 'Build Solution'. This will compile and link all the code and create a floppy image sanos.flp) in the img subdirectory.

The build process

The Makefile first builds the sanos specific win32 based tools:

mkdfs - File system creation tools
mkfloppy - Raw floppy writer utility
mkpart - Partition utility
dbggw - Remote debugger gateway
sow - Sanos-on-Windows library

These tools are placed in the tools directory. Next, all the sanos executable files are compiled, linked, and placed in the bin directory. The following components are built:

Boot sector (boot)
Secondary boot loader (osldr.dll)
Sanos kernel (krnl.dll)
Device drivers (*.sys)
OS API module (os.dll)
C runtime library (libc.lib)
Command line utilities (*.exe)
Win32 API wrappers (*.dll)

The only expected build warning is in osldr:

LINK : warning LNK4096: /BASE value '0x10000' is invalid for Windows 95 and Windows 98; image may not run

The last step in the build process is to make a floppy disk boot image using the mkdfs tool. The control file bootdisk.lst in the build directory is used to create the image. This image (sanos.flp) is placed in the img directory.