From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Grant Edwards To: "Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" Cc: ecos-discuss@sourceware.cygnus.com Subject: Re: [ECOS] How do you like eCos Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:18:00 -0000 Message-id: <20001128122021.D2700@visi.com> References: <3A23C60F0.D360ANARCHY@ms6.hinet.net> <20001128104811.B2700@visi.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20001128120537.00abe8d0@larwe.com> X-SW-Source: 2000-11/msg00361.html On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 12:44:02PM -0500, Lewin A.R.W. Edwards wrote: > >We've been using it for about a year now (we've been shipping a > >product that uses eCos for about 4 months). I've got no > >complaints. The level of support provided by the mailing list > >is _far_ better than support my colleagues have gotten for > >pSOS. > > I'm curious: What specific platform do you use for development, Linux (Intel). > and what is your target CPU/architecture? ARM7TDMI (custom board using a Samsung KS32C5000). > The reason I ask this is because I have one very major gripe > with the free open-source level of support from Red Hat, and > that is that there is no version unification, no known point > from which to start, I'm not sure what you mean. There are "official" releases: the current one is 1.3.1, and you also have access to CVS sources. Commercial products only provide the official releases. > and every time one hits a problem one has to start debugging it > from the ground up. Are you saying that you would prefer that official releases came out more often? > I'm wondering if I have experienced my usual Murphyesque ill > luck and chosen the one maverick platform (pun intended) in the > "supported platforms" list, Don't know. I've never used a supported platform. > but my experience with eCos and its toolchain thus far is that > almost no component has installed/configured/compiled per the > installation instructions, and a big part of the problem is > that instead of providing specific snapshots of known-working > versions, the install instructions refer to nonexistent > historical versions. I guess I didn't have any memorable problems installing and building eCos. It did take a few days of messing around to get the toolchains built, but certainly no more hassle than I've run into with some of the commerical toolchains I've debugged over the years. The nice thing (for me) about using the gnu toolchain is the lack of a learning curve. I've been using gcc et al for almost 15 years, so it was nice that I didn't have to learn yet another set of compiler, assembler, andlinker options when I started doing eCos development. > Point taken about Linux host being less problematic, but I > tried both Linux and Cygwin and had only slightly different > results. Also, I don't know about other embedded engineers, but > it is a significant annoyance to me to have to use anything > other than Win9x for development, I've never used Windows for embedded development, though I used DOS briefly many years ago. I've always found SW development under Unix to be easier than what I've observed other Windows users doing. I started out 15 years ago doing embedded development under Unix, and though I've tried a few other systems in the meanwhile (VMS and DOS), I still find Unix to be the most productive environment. > because most of the special-purpose hardware we use is > DOS-only. It's quite painful to have to use two PCs instead of > one. I don't buy DOS-only hardware. Except for that one HC11 emulator. That one I ran under Linux's DOSemu. Worked better than it did under real DOS. > One certainly couldn't describe eCOS as a fast track to > anything; there are a dozen different steep learning curves to > be climbed before you can even build the OS, much less try to > link your own program. It didn't seem any more difficult than the commerical RTOSes I've used. The process of porting eCos to a new platform and writing drivers for custom hardware seemed equivalent to or better than what I've seen trying to get other RTOSes running on custom hardware. Perhaps there are other systems that are quicker than eCos if you want an off-the-shelf turnkey system, but I've always done development for custom boards, so I can't make a comparison. -- Grant Edwards grante@visi.com