In theory you can use any compiler for OS development. However, the output from the linker at the end must be loadable by what ever boot loader you decide to use. The compiler must also be able to exclude OS dependant libraries from the final build.
ToDo : What other features are required?
Other compilers that can be used for OS development:-
- Borland Turbo C - Only useful for 16bit OSes - Available from the
Borland Museum - Free Pascal Compiler - Useful for 32-bit OSes. Available at www.freepascal.org. Only issue is that you need to write your own RTL to not call system functions.
- TinyCC Available at http://www.tinycc.org.
- FreeBasic - 32-bit BASIC compiler (not an interpreter) that has many new improvements that will help in the OS construction as pointers and inline assembly, Available at http://www.freebasic.net
- Intel C/C++ Compiler. It is very compatibile with MSVC++ (I haven't spent even an hour to change compiler) and GCC (as they say). It uses a lot of fancy optimization features, and it's available for download as 30-days trial from Intel website.
- Nils Weller's C Compiler at http://nwcc.sourceforge.net
- etc.
ToDo : What other compilers can be used for OS development (excluding the GCC, Visual C/C++ and Watcom C/C++ as they are mentioned on the Homepage seperately.