Re: [ECOS] How do you like eCos

[Grant Edwards <grante at visi dot com>]

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