eCos 2.0 Released

Jonathan Larmour points out the "release of eCos 2.0, the configurable RTOS for the deeply embedded market. This release features a new licence based on the GPL, but with an exception to make it more suitable for embedded use. It's also now an independent free software project from the original developers Red Hat (which bought Cygnus Solutions) after the development team was canned. Most of the team still work on eCos but for different companies. It also has a wide range of ports but has managed to keep a low profile, which should now change with the new stable release. More at http://ecos.sourceware.org/ "

More TRON!

[ObviousGuy]

iTRON is a big deal here in Japan with it being one of the leading embedded operating systems here. eCos seems to support a flavor of it.

It would be interesting to see what American companies could do with the TRON system.

Re:More TRON!

[torpor]

I've followed iTRON since the 80's, and am an embedded systems programmer who has worked in the States, and I can tell you that iTRON has been promptly forgotten and resurrected in the US embedded world plenty of times. Every few years it is mentioned, or some trade group announces an implementation of an iTRON-derived embedded spec, etc. But it'll never go mainstream in the US.

The primary reason for US resistance to implementing any of the iTRON protocols is defense. The US embedded market is still dom

C++ and Kernel Coding

[Markus Registrada]

eCos serves as elegant proof that, even in the Free Software world, C++ is a practical language to use for even the lowest-level kernel coding.

Re:C++ and Kernel Coding

[__past__]

If someone would find a proof that C++ is a practical language for anything else but lowest-level programming, then I'd be impressed.

Re:C++ and Kernel Coding

[Markus Registrada]

I see that you haven't found the Boost library [boost.org] yet.

Lambda library, compile-time parser generator library, graph algorithms, regular expressions, safe threads, and on and on.

Re:C++ and Kernel Coding

[__past__]

I have, and Boost is great. Makes adhering to Greenspun's tenth law of programming a piece of cake.

RTOS

[JohnFluxx]

The main difference between this and linux being that this is a real-time operating system - right?

Or am I missing something?

Re:RTOS

[Markus Registrada]

Nowadays (what with Wince out there) we have to say "hard real time". It delivers to-the-nanosecond latency maxima, making it suitable for controlling million-dollar machines that would break, and maybe kill somebody, if it missed. It might be annoying enough if it kept dropping your cellphone connection -- those have hard-real-time constraints, so when Wince runs a cell phone, there's a separate CPU running a real-time kernel.

There are hard-real-time kernels that will run underneath Linux (or NetBSD) so you don't have to choose, you can have both. Sometimes, though, you need networking but can't afford the extra RAM and whatnot to run a whole Unixy environment. Anyway the minimalism can be heady, too, like the thin cold air on a mountain you've just climbed.

I Wonder...

[GypC]

Would this be a suitable platform to use as a base for experimental operating systems? Like, embed a lisp system and base all the higher-level OS functions on lisp?

Re:I Wonder...

[LWATCDR]

I would say that it could be. I have not looked at the source but it seems like it would work for that. A hard real-time lisp system could be interesting. squeak could be an interesting port as well.

How much do these boards cost?

[muleboy]

As a non-professional, where can I find low-cost boards that will run this system, and how much do they cost?

Re:How much do these boards cost?

[stoolpigeon]

I've recently been very interested in trying to learn about embedded programming- so I apologize in advance if this is not helpful, but the book "Embedded Software Development with eCos" by Anthony J Massa uses another pc as the target for its examples. So I would assume (I've downloaded the free electronic version of the book here, [informit.com] but I haven't started working through it yet) that you can learn the tools and OS without investing in a system other than a normal PC. This is part of what I found inviting

Re:How much do these boards cost?

[muleboy]

I assumed that would be the case, since they're basically just underpowered PCs anyway. I have played with the low-end 8-bit microcontrollers (Motorola HC11, PICs, etc), and those are pretty cheap, but much less powerful. I guess whether or not I would get excited about eCos depends on how expensive the target controller boards are. If they're reasonable (< $50), I could do some fun things with them.

Free eCos book available

[stoolpigeon]

... got this link from Bruce Peren's post on the snort thread a day or two ago.

eCos Book [informit.com]

The linux development book is good too.