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>>>>> "Henk" == Henk Devos <henk.devos@dzine.be> writes:
Henk> first: Is anyone working on an intel port or are there any
Henk> plans in that direction ? If not, how much work would it be
Henk> to do something like that ? I didn't look at the source code
Henk> yet. How big is the procesor-dependent part of it (in
Henk> percentage and in lines of code) ?
FAQ entries for these issues are in preparation. For now the best
thing to do is download the sources and look at the various HAL
packages, which account for just about all the processor-specific
code.
Henk> second: To which operating systems is ecos supposed to be a
Henk> direct competitor ? How does it relate to QNX, pSos,
Henk> VxWorks, OS9, Windows CE ?
Although there are plenty of commercial RTOS's out there already,
including the ones you mentioned, it is estimated that over 50% of
embedded projects still use technologies developed wholly or in large
part in-house. eCos' combination of royalty free, open source, and
configurability should eliminate the need for many such in-house
developments. If there are any people out there who want to switch
from one of the existing proprietary ones to eCos instead, for reasons
of quality, performance, cost, or otherwise, then of course we would
welcome them. However the embedded systems industry is a big market,
and there are plenty of opportunities around for other companies to
make money.
In terms of features, supported architectures, and so on it is likely
that many of the proprietary RTOS's currently have a lead over eCos.
The system's first release to the whole community happened less than
three weeks ago, and most other systems have been around a lot longer
than that. When it comes to issues like quality, performance, and code
size, it is hard to give sensible comparisons because different
embedded applications have widely different requirements from the
RTOS. We provide performance measurements as part of the
documentation. More importantly people can download the entire system
including the test cases, and decide for themselves how suitable eCos
is for their particular needs.
Bart Veer // eCos net maintainer