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Re: having ecos working with third-party development environment?


>>>>> "Yin" == Yin Bao <yin.bao@biometricsolutions.com> writes:

    Yin> I am new to ecos and just got the tools it needed and built the
    Yin> library successfully. I need some advice here: is it easy
    Yin> to have ecos working with a third-party development environment
    Yin> in general? Particularly, anybody has done that for Green Hill's
    Yin> MULTI 2000 (IDE for ARM)? My company is making its own hardware
    Yin> with ARM and considers this IDE being helpful in the long run,
    Yin> we are also considering using ecos as the RTOS since there
    Yin> is a port to the processor (Cirrus Logic 7312) from ecos.
    Yin> I can think of a few choices here and would like to get some
    Yin> recommendation/advice from ecos community:

    Yin> Choice 1. move ecos into the third-party IDE. 

    Yin>   This not only involves analyzing makefiles of ecos and
    Yin>   moving the sources into 3rd-party IDE; also involves using
    Yin>   3rd-party cross compiler. Is this doable? How tightly
    Yin>   coupled is ecos with the GNU based
    Yin>   cross-compilers/debuggers? Is it easy to just take ecos
    Yin>   source code into another IDE? Possibility of potential
    Yin>   problems? How much support there might be from ecos
    Yin>   community in that case?

Don't try this. Building eCos involves rather more than just existing
makefiles: it has its own configuration technology which, amongst
other things, generates makefiles appropriate to your configuration.
Trying to reproduce all this in some third party IDE would involve a
serious amount of work.

Also note that eCos is tied heavily to gcc/g++ compiler and linker
technology, and new dependencies on those tools may be added at any
time. Trying to use eCos with other tools would involve a lot of work
and ongoing maintenance.

    Yin> Choice 2. Use ecos as library and have it built under GNU tools,
    Yin>           write applications in 3rd-party IDE. 

    Yin>   The issue here seems to be that ecos uses GNU
    Yin>   corss-compilers, and the application is developed using
    Yin>   another set of cross- compilers/debugger.

Building the application code with non-GNU tools would also cause lots
of problems, although perhaps not quite as bad as building eCos itself
with those tools. Instead you should look at using the GNU tools from
inside the IDE of your choice. Some IDE's may be sufficiently flexible
to allow this, others will be tied to specific tools. If an IDE can be
configured to work with the GNU tools, that may prove viable for
developing the application code. eCos itself should still be built
using the eCos configuration tools, although you might be able to set
up custom build steps inside the IDE which can invoke the eCos tools.

Personally I am happy with my existing emacs-based development
environment, and have no wish to use a GUI-based IDE - in my
experience such environments just get in the way of doing the real
work. I suspect many eCos developers will have a similar attitude, so
you could expect only limited support from the eCos community.

Bart

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