Feature: Compile to standalone x86_64 code for bare metal.

[ApplePieCodes]

If possible, could you attempt to implement this feature. It would make Operating System Development much easier.

[titzer]

Interesting, and not too far-fetched. Currently the compiler can produce ELF and Mach-O x86-64 binaries. In both cases, the compiler inserts only a little bit of startup asm code, and the rest of the runtime system and GC is written in Virgil. There are a handful of syscalls in the compiler-inserted asm code to set up signal handling and the stack, but the rest is in Virgil using Linux.syscall or Darwin.syscall. So switches to turn off that would allow generating a standalone ELF file, which a bootloader could load into memory.

[ApplePieCodes]

Maybe add an asm running command like rust's asm!().

[khaledh]

I'm interested in this as well. I've been developing a kernel in Nim, but I'm always on the lookout for interesting system programming languages. I'd love to give Virgil a try, but without official bare metal support it would be hard.

Things I look for in a language to support kernel programming:

• Freestanding (no stdlib, no OS) output
• Customizable virtual memory page allocator
• Deterministic memory management (no random GC pauses)
• Unsafe pointers
• Custom data layout (Virgil seems to have nice support here, but it's byte-level, would be nice if there's bit-level layout support as well)
• Naked functions (no prolog/epilog) for interrupt handlers

Nice to have:

• Customizing executable layout
• Inline assembly, or at least a stable ABI
• UEFI target (for the bootloader)

I'm pretty sure I forgot other things, but that would be a good start.