The Little Kernel Embedded Operating System

The LK kernel is an SMP-aware kernel designed for small systems ported to a variety of platforms and cpu architectures.

It is used in a variety of open source and closed source projects, notably the bootloader for a lot of Android phones of various make.

See https://github.com/littlekernel/lk for the latest version.

For comprehensive documentation, see Index.

High Level Features

• Fully-reentrant multi-threaded preemptive kernel
• Portable to many 32 and 64 bit architectures
• Support for wide variety of embedded and larger platforms
• Powerful modular build system
• Large number of utility components selectable at build time

Supported architectures

• ARM32
  • Cortex-M class cores (armv6m - armv8m)
  • ARMv7+ Cortex-A class cores
• ARM64
  • ARMv8 and ARMv9 cores
• RISC-V 32 and 64bit bit in machine and supervisor mode
• x86-32 and x86-64
• Motorola 68000
• MIPS
• OpenRISC 1000
• VAX (experimental)

Command Completion

To enable tab completion for LK projects and common build targets in Bash or Zsh, source the following script in your shell session:

source scripts/completion.sh

You can also add this line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file to enable it automatically for all sessions.