5.4. Project Sandboxing¶

Project specific sandboxes let you have a number of projects running in parallel with each project in its own sandbox. You simply have a prefix per project and under that prefix you create a simple yet repeatable structure.

As an example lets say I have a large disk mounted under /bd for Big Disk. As root create a directory called projects and give the directory suitable permissions to be writable by you as a user.

Lets create a project sandbox for my Box Sorter project. First create a project directory called /bd/projects/box-sorter. Under this create rtems and under that create rtems-4.11.0. Under this path you can follow the Releases procedure to build a tool set using the prefix of /bd/projects/box-sorter/rtems/4.11.0. You are free to create your project specific directories under /bd/projects/box-sorter. The top level directories would be:

/bd/projects: Project specific development trees.
/bd/projects/box-sorter: Box Sorter project sandbox.
/bd/projects/box-sorter/rtems/4.11.0: Project prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0 compiler, debuggers, tools and installed Board Support Package (BSP).

A variation is to use the --without-rtems option with the RSB to not build the BSPs when building the tools and to build RTEMS specifically for each project. This lets you have a production tools installed at a top level on your disk and each project can have a specific and possibly customised version of RTEMS. The top level directories would be:

/bd/rtems: The top path to production tools.
/bd/rtems/4.11.0: Production prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0 compiler, debuggers and tools.
/bd/projects: Project specific development trees.
/bd/projects/box-sorter: Box Sorter project sandbox.
/bd/projects/box-sorter/rtems: Box Sorter project’s custom RTEMS kernel source and installed BSP.

A further varation if there is an RTEMS kernel you want to share between projects is it to move this to a top level and share. In this case you will end up with:

/bd/rtems: The top path to production tools and kernels.
/bd/rtems/4.11.0: Production prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0.
/bd/rtems/4.11.0/tools: Production prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0 compiler, debuggers and tools.
/bd/rtems/4.11.0/bsps: Production prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0 Board Support Packages (BSPs).
/bd/projects: Project specific development trees.
/bd/projects/box-sorter: Box Sorter project sandbox.

Finally you can have a single set of production tools and RTEMS BSPs on the disk under /bd/rtems you can share between your projects. The top level directories would be:

/bd/rtems: The top path to production tools and kernels.
/bd/rtems/4.11.0: Production prefix for RTEMS 4.11.0 compiler, debuggers, tools and Board Support Packages (BSPs).
/bd/projects: Project specific development trees.
/bd/projects/box-sorter: Box Sorter project sandbox.

The project sandoxing approach allows you move a specific production part into the project’s sandbox to allow you to customise it. This is useful if you are testing new releases. The typical dependency is the order listed above. You can test new RTEMS kernels with production tools but new tools will require you build the kernel with them. Release notes with each release will let know what you need to update.

If the machine is a central project development machine simply replace projects with users and give each user a personal directory.