April
1998, Issue 93
Software
Development for RTOSs
by
Ingo Cyliax
Reusability
is critical to software development. So, this month,
Ingo shows us how to port programs written in our
favorite programming languages into two popular RTOSs.
He then debugs the code with target- and host-based
debuggers.
Last
month, I looked at some issues related to selecting
a RTOS. The sample application needed an RTOS to generate
precise timing signals for actuators used in a six-legged
robot, while at the same time requiring some soft real-time
processes to run in the system.
This
month, I discuss the typical software development environments
encountered when building embedded-PC applications.
I use some of the sample code presented last month to
show how I ported it to two popular RTOSs—QNX OS
and Phar Lap’s ETS Realtime.
What
do we need in order to develop code for an embedded
real-time application? Most RTOSs provided libraries
for the API, which are linked with your application.
So, you need a compiler, which compiles the code into
an object to be linked with your RTOS library, and a
linker, which links your compiled code with the RTOS
libraries.
Let’s
get on with it and take a look at some programming languages
used to develop real-time applications for embedded
PCs.
