[ECOS] Re: Request Regarding ECos

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at eCosCentric dot com>]

Please keep queries like this on the mailing lists unless you are 
approaching eCosCentric for commercial stuff, thanks.

Sandeep Patnaik wrote:
> Sir
>
> I am Sandeep Patnaik, from INDIA, working on a project on robotics.
> I am working on a VIA system. The boot image is basically in 
> a flash drive. At present I am working on LFS (Linux from Scratch). There 
> is a requirement to switch to either eCos or Embeded Debian. I have a few 
> querries regarding the system. I will be grateful if you could help me 
> with them.
>
> 1. How difficult it is to compile new libraries into eCos?

Depends on the library. Lots of stuff has already been ported to eCos.

> 2. Does is have wireless driver support?

No, although I remember a port to the Orinoco wavelan card. Search the 
patch archives.

> 3. Does it have USB 2.0 support for Compact Flash and USB Flash?

If you mean for storage, then no, not yet.

> 4. It has threads - how good are they?

Oh, the best ;-). They are real-time which standard linux is not. Don't 
really know what you expect here.

> 5. What is the memory footprint for it? How small can we make it?

Tens of K. Or if you use lots of stuff, then hundreds of K - the point with 
eCos is that you only pay for the stuff you use.

> 6. Does it run OpenCV, X-windows and other common image processing 
> libraries?

There is a microwindows port. I understand microwindows has an Xlib 
compatibility interface, although I don't think that's in the snapshot 
we've got now.

> 7. Can I use a library meant for Linux on it? If not, what is the 
> alternative?

Depends on the library. Some libraries are very tied to linux, some are 
portable. eCos is not linux, so some things will work and other things 
would need porting work.

> 8. How good is Embedded Debian compared to eCos?

Don't know a whole lot about Emdebian. Of the things I know or would 
surmise: it's much much bigger (megabytes, not K), it's higher overhead 
(still the full kernel with MMU and task switching overheads), it's not 
real-time, they even say themselves it's a work-in-progress whereas eCos is 
more mature as an embedded OS. In its favour is wider device support and a 
larger software base.

> I understand that these are quite a few questions but i request you to 
> help me. The porting of the OS is last moment and is very urgent.

Don't rely on volunteers for urgent replies!

Jifl
--
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
>>>>> Visit us in booth 2527 at the Embedded Systems Conference 2004 <<<<<
March 30 - April 1, San Francisco http://www.esconline.com/electronicaUSA/
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine


--
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss