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Welcome to PicOS Development!

Welcome to the documentation for PicOS, a lightweight app platform for the ClockworkPi PicoCalc. If you're excited about creating retro-style games and utilities with modern tools, you're in the right place.

PicOS is built on a simple yet powerful idea: a small, fast C-language kernel lives on the device, providing a safe, sandboxed Lua 5.4 environment for your applications. All your apps reside on a swappable SD card, making development as easy as editing a text file.

The Core Philosophy

The OS handles the low-level hardware details so you can focus on your app's logic. The architecture is clean and robust:

• Resident OS (Flash): The core kernel, drivers, Lua runtime, and the main app launcher are stored on the device's internal flash.
• Your Apps (SD Card): Each app is a simple directory on the SD card containing an app.json metadata file and a main.lua script (for Lua apps) or a main.elf binary (for native apps). This means you can swap apps just by swapping cards!

Native App Support

For performance-critical applications or those who prefer C/C++, PicOS supports Native App Development using a C API that mirrors the Lua SDK. Native apps are compiled as Position-Independent ELF binaries and loaded into PSRAM.

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