Re: [ECOS] newbie

[Jonathan Larmour <jlarmour@cygnus.co.uk>]

Lance Uyehara wrote:
> 
> I'm in the evaluation stage of a project, and we're looking at ecos as a
> potential kernel solution. I'm currently looking at the ecos configuration
> tool and wondering if people are using this.

Oh, absolutely :-).

> It seems to me like specifying arm pid or arm aeb (for example) is far too
> restricting. Wouldn't we want something more like arm720T or arm7TDMI?
>
> Because any project I develop won't be targeted to run on any development
> board, but rather would be targeted to run on our actual product board.

Currently via anonymous CVS, for ARM we support AEB, PID, Cirrus Logic
CL7111/EDB7211 and Cogent CMA230 boards. One of those might be closer to
your product board. We have other non-public ARM ports as well but you can
only get those with our "early access" program.

> So I guess my main question is are people using the configuration tool, or
> using the repository with hand built makefiles, or is it some combination
> of the two?

It sounds like you need to do a port of a "platform HAL" to your board. It's
probably best to copy one of the existing platform HALs that is closest to
your product board, and start making appropriate changes :-). The way eCos
is architected, it takes surprisingly little time to get a basic port doing
something (there's a lot of stuff you can skip over that isn't needed to get
simple programs running at first).

Comprehensive testing can be tricky though - here at Cygnus we have lots of
automated testing for lots of our customers' board ports that tends to show
up lots of timing problems etc. that would be difficult to find otherwise.
It's something to remember anyway - just because it *appears* to work
doesn't mean it always does, so you should be prepared to do lots of very
repetitive testing if you want a solid port.

I'm sure people on this list would be happy to help answer questions you
have doing the port. Although, of course, Cygnites can't guarantee to answer
questions in great detail nor very quickly because we have to serve our real
support customers first... but we try and help at some level when we have
time.

Jifl
-- 
Cygnus Solutions, 35 Cambridge Place, Cambridge, UK.  Tel: +44 (1223) 728762
"I used to have an open mind but || Get yer free open source RTOS's here...
 my brains kept falling out."    || http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos
Help fight spam! http://spam.abuse.net/  These opinions are all my own fault