[ECOS] Re: the hurd

[Bart Veer <bartv@cygnus.co.uk>]

>>>>> "Stephane" == Stephane Conversy <Stephane.Conversy@lri.fr> writes:

    Stephane> Could ecos be the microkernel for the hurd, instead of
    Stephane> mach ?

Not really. eCos is aimed at deeply embedded systems, so for example
there is no support for multiple processes, only multiple threads. The
hurd is intended as a fully-fledged Unix system. The basic
requirements are different and conflicting.

    Stephane> Is it comparable to qnx ?

This would be a closer comparison than the hurd (even more so for
Neutrino), but there are still major differences. QNX still supports
multiple processes, memory protection, etc. and there are overheads
associated with those. Also qnx was developed mainly for PC-style
hardware, and support for other platforms is relatively new. eCos has
been designed right from the start to go into custom embedded hardware
and already supports quite a wide range of target processors.

There are also some rather significant differences when it comes to
licensing and open source issues.

    Stephane> Would it be difficult to port posix apps on ecos ?

Right now we do not have a POSIX compatibility layer for eCos, so
porting POSIX apps is non-trivial. Such a layer is under
consideration, I cannot provide any more details just yet.

Bart Veer // eCos net maintainer