This program popped up on Hacker News recently. It's the only modern
compiler I've ever seen that doesn't have dependencies and is easily
modified. So I added all of the missing GNU extensions I like to use
which means it might be possible soon to build on non-Linux and have
third party not vendor gcc binaries.
blinkenlights now does a pretty good job emulating what happens when
binaries boot from BIOS into long mode. So it's been much easier to
debug the bare metal process and wrinkle out many issues.
I wanted a tiny scriptable meltdown proof way to run userspace programs
and visualize how program execution impacts memory. It helps to explain
how things like Actually Portable Executable works. It can show you how
the GCC generated code is going about manipulating matrices and more. I
didn't feel fully comfortable with Qemu and Bochs because I'm not smart
enough to understand them. I wanted something like gVisor but with much
stronger levels of assurances. I wanted a single binary that'll run, on
all major operating systems with an embedded GPL barrier ZIP filesystem
that is tiny enough to transpile to JavaScript and run in browsers too.
https://justine.storage.googleapis.com/emulator625.mp4
Justine Tunney