Jump to content

eCos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.0.124.33 (talk) at 19:36, 1 March 2011 (an unrelated article with an almost identical name). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

eCos
eCos
DevelopereCos community, Free Software Foundation
Written inC, C++, assembly
OS familyReal-time operating systems
Working stateCurrent
Source modelOpen source
Latest release3.0 / March, 2009
Marketing targetEmbedded systems
PlatformsARM, CalmRISC, FR-V, Hitachi H8, IA-32, Motorola 68000, Matsushita AM3x, MIPS, NEC V8xx, Nios II, PowerPC, SPARC, and SuperH
LicenseGNU General Public License (with linking exception)[1]
Official websiteecos.sourceware.org
Not to be confused with Écos.

eCos (embedded configurable operating system) is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs. It is implemented in C/C++ and has compatibility layers and APIs for POSIX and µITRON.

Design

eCos was designed for devices with memory size in the tens to hundreds of kilobytes[2], or with real-time requirements. It can be used on hardware with too little RAM to support embedded Linux, which currently needs a minimum of about 2 MB of RAM, not including application and service needs.

eCos runs on a wide variety of hardware platforms, including ARM, CalmRISC, FR-V, Hitachi H8, IA-32, Motorola 68000, Matsushita AM3x, MIPS, NEC V8xx, Nios II, PowerPC, SPARC, and SuperH.

Included with the eCos distribution is RedBoot, an open source application that uses the eCos Hardware Abstraction Layer to provide bootstrap firmware for embedded systems.

History

eCos was initially developed by Cygnus Solutions which was later bought by Red Hat. In early 2002, Red Hat ceased development of eCos and laid off the staff that were working on the project[3]. Many of the laid-off staff continued to work on eCos, and some formed their own companies providing services for the software. In January 2004, at the request of the eCos developers, Red Hat agreed to transfer its eCos copyrights to the Free Software Foundation[4]. The transfer was executed in October 2005 and finally implemented in May 2008.

Non-free versions

eCosPro is a proprietary eCos and RedBoot distribution created by eCosCentric that is targeted towards developers looking to integrate eCos and RedBoot within commercial products. It is claimed as a "stable, fully tested, certified and supported version"[5], however, some of the additional features have not been released as free software.

Criticisms

The FreeBSD TCP/IP network stack port included with eCos is out of date—circa 2001—and exposes systems using such to numerous security and stability vulnerabilities (FreeBSD RELENG 4 4 0 RELEASE for IPv4 and FreeBSD's origin KAME for IPv6), despite being claimed as "recent" in eCos documentation. Official eCos maintainers do not appear to monitor FreeBSD or KAME for security or stability updates, but rather rely on minimal and insufficient bug reports from users of eCos.

The SNMP package is rudimentary at best, once again, apparently due to its age.

See also

References

  1. ^ eCos official website. "eCos License Overview". Retrieved 2009-06-22. eCos is released under a modified version of the well known GNU General Public License (GPL).
  2. ^ Larmour, Jonathan (May 2005). "How eCos can be shrunk to fit" (PDF). Embedded Systems Europe. p. 34.
  3. ^ "Red Hat backs away from eCos?". linuxdevices.com. 2002-06-19. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  4. ^ "Red Hat to contribute copyrights held in the eCos code base to the Free Software Foundation" (Press release). Red Hat. 2004-01-13.
  5. ^ "eCosCentric announces eCosPro Developer's Kit" (Press release). OSNews. 2003-09-02. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ECos&oldid=416604027"