OrbitOS — Virtual File System and Command Dispatch Engine

OrbitOS is a C++17 systems-programming project that implements an in-memory virtual file system, a command-line interface and a small command-dispatch layer.

The project is intended as a learning and engineering exercise in ownership, tree data structures, command parsing, persistence and modular C++ design.

Features

• In-memory N-ary file and directory tree.
• Ownership of child nodes through std::unique_ptr.
• Navigation commands such as cd, pwd, ls and tree.
• File and directory manipulation commands including mkdir, rm, cp and wtf.
• Recursive search and content search.
• Favorite/write-protection flags.
• Binary save/load support for the current file-system state.
• A command dispatcher generated from an X-macro command list.
• A small .orb scripting prototype.
• A diagnostic command test runner.

Architecture

CLI input
   │
   ▼
Command tokenizer
   │
   ▼
Hashed command dispatcher
   │
   ▼
File-system command handlers
   │
   ▼
N-ary File tree owned by unique_ptr
   │
   └── persistence and search helpers

The command dispatcher is designed to provide constant-time average lookup under its hash-table assumptions. This claim applies to command lookup; filesystem traversal and search remain dependent on the number and shape of nodes.

Repository structure

include/       Public class and command declarations
src/           Filesystem, command and CLI implementations
tests/         Diagnostic test driver and command script
docs/          Additional project documentation
Makefile       Build and test commands

Build and run

On a Linux environment with a C++17 compiler:

make run

Run the diagnostic suite

make test

The current test runner executes a scripted set of commands and reports command-level failures. It is a smoke-test suite rather than a complete unit, property-based or fuzz-testing framework.

Current limitations

The persistence format is a simple project-specific binary representation and is not intended as a stable cross-version file format. Error handling is lightweight, and malformed input, corrupted persistence files and unusual quoting cases require additional tests.

The .orb scripting subsystem is an experimental prototype. Some commands and parsing paths are incomplete and should not be treated as a production scripting language.

Roadmap

• Add unit tests for hashing, collisions, parsing and filesystem invariants.
• Add tests for corrupted and truncated save files.
• Define a versioned persistence format.
• Improve path parsing and quoted-argument handling.
• Complete the .orb scripting commands.
• Add sanitizers and a CI build with GCC and Clang.
• Remove generated binaries from version control and make builds reproducible from source.

Educational focus

OrbitOS demonstrates practical C++ concepts including RAII, smart-pointer ownership, recursive data structures, serialization, command dispatch and basic test automation. It is not an operating-system kernel; it is a user-space virtual filesystem and command environment.

License

See the repository license if present. Contributions should include a description of the tested behavior and any persistence-format implications.