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/ "

Comments

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 dominated by defense contracts and government spending - iTRON is a big no-no in those realms.

Still, I see the intent of iTRON being accomplished in other ways these days - combine some of the work done on uClinux for example, to get the linux kernel running in MMU-less processors, with a little of the open source zeroconf effort, and its feasible to build iTRON-like devices.

Re:More TRON!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another free-as-in-speech RTOS with an ITRON API. See http://www.rtems.com for details.

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 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...

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be used in that way, but if you're looking for a LISP-based system for your x86 or PowerPC machine, I would say that eCos probably isn't targeted towards you.

eCos is more oriented towards the folks who have time-critical apps (as in, latency *must* not exceed a certain threshold measured in milli-, micro-, or nano-seconds). Your typical desktop machine doesn't need these features-- if your TV tuner's video is 3 milliseconds out of sync with its audio, you aren't going to cause a fighter jet to crash.

Maybe you'd do well to just base such a system on a BSD or Linux kernel? Dump everything else (from libc on up) from the system, then write your own functions and your own LISP interpreter. Tack the interpreter on top of the kernel and library, then build from there.

Of course, you could also use other systems, too-- it doesn't have to be Unix-like at the core. Mach? Menuet? FreeDOS? A lot of good systems out there you can play with...

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, 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 about the whole thing. I can play/learn to my hearts content without forking over large quantities of cash. (which I don't have anyway)

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

The linux development book is good too.