Python for RTEMS.

[Chris Johns]

Chris Caudle wrote:
> Woo hoo!  You rock!  Chris Johns for governor of California!

I have never been to the gym, cannot act and have never been in a movie ;-)

> 
> I had wondered about Python on an RTOS before, but had somewhat dismissed
 > it as being larger and more complex than you would normally use for 
deeply
 > embedded or real time targets.
 >

It all depends on your view. It is not a small package, but then again 
it is not too large for what you get. I found I could get Python to run 
with pre-compiled modules in 4M of RAM. This is Python, RTEMS, 
networking stack, driver etc. You could do almost nothing as no memory 
was left.

I have Python running on a 32M Colfire board that is no bigger than a 
couple of credit cards.

> I would think that embedded Linux would be  a more likely Python platform.

This depends on the application. I want realtime performance. I do not 
expect to write the realtime parts of any application in Python.

> What made you decide to work on the Python/RTEMS port?

It started out as an exercise to see how easy it would be. Python and 
RTEMS have both taken great care to support standards. As a result of 
this they both came together with ease. For people looking at different 
operating systems to write an application support for standards is very 
important and RTEMS has come though this little test with great results. 
We have Joel to thank for this.

As embedded micros get faster and faster and memory for them increases 
we started to look for ways to easy the development time for parts of 
our applications. Python offers a great range of add ons. For example 
sending an email, ftp client, the twisted frame work, or even dynamic 
web pages (http://spyce.sourceforge.net/).

Python allow us to ship a product and have a user develop some custom app.

We do not expect to write realtime code in Python, but rather the 
application monitoring and control type parts, eg XML.

Now we have Python running we will start to explore ways to use it.

-- 
  Chris Johns, cjohns at cybertec.com.au