RTEMS News

July 15, 2006

We are approaching the branching point for 4.7. Last week, Joel released nearly a complete set of new development tool RPMs based upon Ralf's new RPM specifications. There are a couple of issues needing to be resolved before branching but we are very close. Please help test your configuration and update the appropriate BSP Wiki page with success information.

April 24, 2006

4.6.6 is now available. It addresses a handful of problems with the most critical being the infamous barrier patch caused by gcc moving code outside of an interrupt disable critical section. Improvments in 4.6.6 include an update to the Leon3 BSP which adds SpaceWire support and a patch to the pc386 BSP which makes it easy to configure it for VGA or COM1 as the console.

In addition to the general improvements in the 4.6 release series, there is also 4.6.6 specific information and download information here. If you are in a hurry though, the release and all add-on packages may be downloaded via ftp or http.

April 24, 2006

4.6.99.3 is now available. It is primarily a snapshot to get feedback on and is accompanied by new gcc/newlib and gdb RPMS. It includes at least two new BSPs for Toshiba reference boards (RBTX4925 and RBTX4938) from Bruce Robinson of PMC Corporation. There are numerous other improvements and additions. If I forgot to include something you did, please report it so it can be listed here.

4.6.99.3 and all add-on packages may be downloaded via ftp or http.

March 28, 2006

The current development focus is on getting new tool binaries out the door using RPM spec files from Ralf Corsepius. These new RPM spec files will better support using a GNU/Linux host to build cross tools for other hosts (e.g. build Mingw hosted toolset that targets m68k-rtems on a GNU/Linux host). In addition, the main OAR RTEMS development server has been upgraded and a chroot'ed RedHat 7.3 environment installed. This chroot'ed environment is the build environment for all RTEMS toolsets. Stabilizing the toolset RPMs is a prerequisite for cutting a 4.7 release branch.

January 25, 2006

The CVS head continues to evolve and improve. Highlights of recent activities include:

• Motorola MPC5200 support with multiple BSPs by Thomas Doerfler
• Large speedup in FAT filesystem performance by Thomas Doerfler
• More autotools build infrastructure improvements by Ralf Corsepius
• RTEMS RPMs submitted to Fedora Extras by Ralf Corsepius
• SuperCore Doxygen comment conversion by Joel Sherrill

We expect to receive a new MIPS R4000 BSP and port to the Altera NIOS2 in the near future.

October 6, 2005

RTEMS 4.6.5 is now available. This release addresses 6 issues reported by users with previous releases. Most of the issues were improvements to BSPs. One critical issue was a missing patch to the shared console driver source which resulted in multiple not compiling. In addition to the general improvements in the 4.6 release series, there is also 4.6.5 specific information and download information here. If you are in a hurry though, the release and all add-on packages may be downloaded via ftp or http.

September 1, 2005

RTEMS 4.6.4 is now available. This release addresses 38 problems reported by users with previous releases. The 4.6.4 release does include some bug fixes although improvements and cleanups account for more than 50% of the changes by bulk. In addition to the general improvements in the 4.6 release series, there is also 4.6.4 specific information and download information here. may be downloaded via ftp or http. Thanks again to Ralf Corsepius for his work which allows the 4.6 series tools to be installed in parallel with those for the 4.5 release series and the CVS development trunk. Without this capability, it would be more difficult to test and maintain older RTEMS releases. The 4.6.4 release represents months of user problems reports and testing in parallel with true development on the CVS trunk. Continuing to provide bug fix releases is critical for embedded systems with long lifespans.

August 29, 2005

There is a lot of activity on the CVS head which will turn into 4.7 and a number of minor fixes to the 4.6 branch. Right now, I (Joel) am working on a new set of RPMs for the CVS head. This wil include new automake, binutils, gcc/newlib, and gdb RPMs. Moving to binutils 2.16.1 broke the old gdb RPMs so I am currently debugging new gdb RPMs. Once these work, all will be released along with a snapshot from the CVS head. I continue to encourage everyone to test the CVS head and pass along fixes. If you have CVS write permission, please take a pass through the outstanding PRs and try to close them.

June 1, 2005

There are new gcc/newlib and binutils RPMs available for use with the CVS head. If you are using APT or YUM, a simple update will be sufficient to transition to them. Otherwise, they may be downlaoded via ftp or http from the RTEMS ftp site. Thanks to Ralf Corsepius for helping out so much on these in spite of all the frustrations. The rtems-4.7-gcc4.0.0newlib1.13.0-2 RPM set includes C for 11 targets, C++ for 9, and Ada for 7. They may be downloaded via ftp or http. This set of RPMs includes C for 11 RTEMS targets, C++ for 9, and Ada for 7 RTEMS targets. The rtems-4.7-binutils-2.16-1 RPM set includes support for 13 RTEMS targets and may be downloaded via ftp or http.

May 6, 2005

The CVS head has had a lot of activity over the past few months including multiple new BSPs (Gamepark GP32, Radstone EP1A, Arcturus Networks uC5282), old BSPs removed, unification of the PCI and IRQ APIs, removal of warnings from gcc 4.0, and much more. The current plan is to release gcc 4.0.0 RPMs soon. Ralf has successfully built most targets including Ada support so it should just be a matter of duplicating that and providing them on the ftp site.

October 18, 2004

RTEMS 4.6.2 is now available. This release addresses the 36 problems reported by users with the 4.6.1 release. The 4.6.2 release does include some bug fixes although improvements and cleanups account for at least 50% of the PRs closed. The biggest improvement is the new NFS client for RTEMS which was contributed by Till Straumann of Stanford University. In addition to the general improvements in the 4.6 release series, there is also 4.6.2 specific information and download information here. If you are in a hurry though, the release and all add-on packages may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.rtems.com/pub/rtems/4.6.2.

Septermber 23, 2004 -- RTEMS Wiki Online

RTEMS has long needed a dynamic system to capture information about using BSPs, applications, hints, etc.. The current FAQ is a static document and it has proven difficult to add information in a timely manner. Enter the RTEMS Wiki. Some of the current FAQ and application information has already been transfered to the Wiki. Also an initial structure has been added for BSP and application information. Everyone is encouraged to shared their knowledge, pitch in, and edit away.

June 3, 2004 -- Upgrade Update

On May 23, there was a security breach on the rtems.com server. The breach was cleaned up and this was taken as a sign that the overdue OS upgrade needed to be performed. At this point, we believe everything EXCEPT the generation of indices for site searches (ht://Dig) is back on-line. The most noticeable impact of the update should be that new versions of GNATS, GNATSWeb, and CVSWeb are now being used.

April 8, 2004

RTEMS 4.6.1 is now available. This release addresses the 14 problems reported by users with the 4.6.0 release. The general improvements in the 4.6 release series and more specific download information are discussed here. The release and add-on packages may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.rtems.com/pub/rtems/4.6.1.

February 4, 2004

RTEMS 4.6.0 is now available. This release has a lot of improvements over the 4.5 release series. Some of the high level differences are discussed here. The release, tools, and add-on packages may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.rtems.com/pub/rtems/4.6.0. Be warned that this is a large directory (1.6 GB) so please try to download just what you require. There are multiple ways to assist in just downloading what you need:

• There are now APT and Yum Repository for the RTEMS Tools which eases downloading and updating.

January 9, 2004

The past few months have seen a lot of internal activity that has not yet been reflected to the public. I just updated the page that documents what is happening on the development trunk and here are just a few highlights of on-going activities that will make their public debut shortly:

• Toolsets for 4.6 and the development tree are now independent of one another and can be installed in paralled on the same development machine.
• At the suggestion of Ralf, the RTEMS toolsets will soon be able to be automatically upgraded. We are in the process of setting up apt4rpm on the RTEMS server.
• Once apt4rpm is installed, 4.6.0 will be release.
• The conversion to complete use of automake and separation of BSP and CPU Kits is coming closer to completion.

So hang on, all this infrastructure work is about to pay off handsomely.

October 20, 2003

RTEMS 4.6.0pre5 has been released. This is the fourth and hopefully final preview of the 4.6.0 release. Thanks to everyone's testing, 58 problems were found and fixed. The biggest change however is that now the tools are installed to /opt/rtems-4.6 by default to avoid potential conflicts as development proceeds. For those who remember, there came a point past the 4.5 releases where those tools no longer worked with new snapshots. This addresses that problem by providing distinct toolsets with different install points for the 4.6 release series and future snapshots.

September 9, 2003

Cogent Computer Systems, Inc. has announced the availability of an RTEMS BSP for their AT91RM9200 ARM920T based CSB337 board. See http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5580793766.html for more information.

August 7, 2003

NEW WEB SITE AND SERVER!!! The completely new RTEMS website and all RTEMS project support services are now on dedicated computer at the rtems.com domain. This server is currently hosting web, ftp, cvs, and bug tracking services for the project. Thanks to OAR Corporation for providing the computer and hosting.

July 7, 2003

RTEMS 4.6.0pre4 has been released. This is the fourth and hopefully final preview of the 4.6.0 release. It addresses 10 problems reported against pre3.

July 3, 2003

RTEMS ss-20030703 has been released. This snapshot addresses a range of issues from minor bugs to improvements in documentation. See the ANNOUNCEMENT associated with the snapshot for more details.

May 23, 2003

GCC 3.2.3/Newlib 1.11.0 (revision 2) tools made available on RTEMS ftp site. Binaries for GNU/Linux (RPMs), Cygwin, and Solaris were included in addition to source and patches. Revision 1 was only used for testing purposes. Revision 2 was required in order to include the libstdc++ i386 atomicity.h fix.

May 19, 2003

The RTEMS mailing list archives have been regenerated to make email addresses harder to harvest by Spammers. The obvious results of this are that "@" is now "at" and that "." is not "dot". This was done to all archived messages back to 1999.

April 18, 2003

RTEMS SS-20030417 has been released. This snapshot fixes minor bugs including a build failure for the MCP750 BSP and the Development Environment Guide.