OSDev.org

I've been stepping through the MeatySkeleton Tutorial trying to understand each piece. I think I've got most of it down but I don't understand how the functions included in libc get linked when compiling the kernel.

I'm trying to recreate my own version of MeatySkeleton and when compiling the kernel I get 'undefined reference to ...' for anything from the libc directory.

As the tutorial explains, if you want to use kind functions you need to create your own kind.

I have written headers and sources for the functions I am trying to use. With all headers installed my sysroot looks something like


And the function I'm attempting to use, printf, comes from stdio.h. Does this mean libk.a is not getting created correctly? Is that where the sources are being linked from?

*Edit*: the libk.a archive does contain printf.libk.o so I'm not sure what is happening.

Do you have -lk in your $LIBS variable in kernel/Makefile?

edit: Or more precisely, when you build the kernel, is gcc being passed -lk.

StudlyCaps you indeed have the studliest of caps. I must have missed this flag.

What does it do? I can't find anything about what it does anywhere.

It specifies that you want to link libk. You don't need to specify -lc as it is assumed.

In general, if you want to link libfoo you need -lfoo.

You know I do

It tells the linker to link against a library named libk.

edit: beaten!