Re: Orocos and RTAI/LXRT

Peter Soetens <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.science.robotics.orocos.user
Organization KU Leuven
Message-ID <[email protected]>
just some comments to clarify....

On Monday 23 June 2003 21:18, Herman Bruyninckx wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Peter Soetens wrote:
>
> [... RTAI/LXRT...]
>
> > Does this mean we drop portability ? Certainly not ! Orocos still has an
> > os-abstraction layer, and kernel-RTAI and kernel-RTLinux just fell out
> > because of the 'incompleteness' they offer in their API.
>
> Some current problems:
> 1. the RTLinux support for user space hard real-time is poor, in the
>    GPL version at least. So, no portability there.
> 2. RTAI/LXRT currently only runs on ia32 systems (Intel, AMD, ...)
>    So, not PowerPC or ARM or Xscale, or...

But since this is a demand driven 'market', ports to these platforms will 
become available when they're at least needed by someone who finds it worth 
investing time in it (and contributing it back)

> 3. the LXRT calls are fully RTAI-only. This could be tackled by
>    neutral wrappers. (As is already done in the existing
>    OS-abstraction for all "normal" OS interactions.)

One can not see in Orocos that one is using LXRT or not. OS primitives are 
hidden behind the OS abstraction layer, device drivers behind the FDI 
(Framework Device Interfaces). I know we got that one right.

Peter
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Soetens                                      http://www.orocos.org
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Division Production Engineering,                      tel. +32 16 322773
Machine Design and Automation                         fax. +32 16 322987
Celestijnenlaan 300B                   [email protected]
B-3001 Leuven Belgium                 http://www.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/pma
------------------------------------------------------------------------
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.