2. RTEMS Ecosystem

The RTEMS Ecosystem is the collection of tools, packages, code, documentation and online content provided by the RTEMS Project. The ecosystem provides a way to develop, maintain, and use RTEMS. It’s parts interact with the user, the host environment, and each other to make RTEMS accessable, useable and predicable.

The ecosystem is for users, developers and maintainers and it is an on going effort that needs your help and support. The RTEMS project is always improving the way it delivers the kernel to you and your feedback is important so please join the mailing lists and contribute back comments, success stories, bugs and patches.

What the RTEMS project describes here to develop, maintain and use RTEMS does not dictate what you need to use in your project. You can and should select the work-flow that best suites the demands of your project and what you are delivering.

2.1. Rational

RTEMS is complex and the focus of the RTEMS Ecosystem is to simplify the complexity for users by providing a stable documented way to build, configure and run RTEMS. RTEMS is more than a kernel running real-time applications on target hardware, it is part of a project’s and therefore team’s workflow and every project and team is different.

RTEMS’s ecosystem does not mandate a way to work. It is a series of parts, components, and items that are used to create a suitable development environment to work with. The processes explained in this manual are the same things an RTEMS maintainer does to maintain the kernel or an experienced user does to build their production system. It is important to keep this in mind when working through this manual. We encourage users to explore what can be done and to discover ways to make it fit their needs. The ecosystem provided by the RTEMS Project will not install in a single click of a mouse because we want users to learn the parts they will come to depend on as their project’s development matures.

The RTEMS Ecosystem provides a standard interface that is the same on all supported host systems. Standardizing how a user interacts with RTEMS is important and making that experience portable is also important. As a result the ecosystem is documented at the command line level and we leave GUI and IDE integration for users and integrators.

Standardizing the parts and how to use them lets users create processes and procedures that are stable over releases. The RTEMS Ecosystem generates data that can be used to audit the build process so their configuration can be documented.

The ecosystem is based around the source code used in the various parts, compontents and items of the RTEMS development environment. A user can create an archive of the complete build process including all the source code for long term storage. This is important for projects with a long life cycle.

2.2. Open Source

RTEMS is an open source operating system and an open source project and this extends to the ecosystem. We encourage users to integrate the processes to build tools, the kernel and any 3rd party libraries into their project’s configuration management processes.

All the parts that make up the ecosystem are open source. The ecosystem uses a package’s source code to create an executable on a host so when an example RTEMS executable is created and run for the first time the user will have built every tool as well as the executable from source. The RTEMS Project believes the freedom this gives a user is as important as the freedom of having access to the source code for a package.

2.3. Deployment

The RTEMS Project provides the ecosystem as source code that users can download to create personalised development environments. The RTEMS Project does not provide packaging and deployment for a specific host environment, target architecture or BSP. The RTEMS Project encourages users and organizations to fill this role for the community.