Recomended host environment?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2007-08-15 at 07:49 +0000, Martin Strand wrote:

> Finally, here's my questions (which I hope some RTEMS users can help
> me with):
>  
> Is there any suggestions on which target platform to use when starting
> to work with RTEMS (in terms of easy to get started with, easy to
> debug, good support, well documented turorials,  BSP support, etc.)?

i386-based target platforms probably are the best supported ones.

Least recommended are the "small ones": tic4x (more or less dead and
only of academical interest due to its peculiarities), avr (Incomplete
port in RTEMS, fairly unstable toolchain), h8300 (I am not aware of
anybody using it), and bfin (very new port with pretty immature
toolchain).

All other targets are pretty much "on par".

> Is there a prefered host system?
rpm-based Linux systems. 

We (OAR, rtems.org) are supplying toolchain binaries (rpms) and
toolchain src.rpms for RH/Fedora. As Mandriva isn't too different from
RH/Fedora, the binaries are likely also to work on Mandriva or be
rebuildable there. 

> Any prefered emulators?
Depends widely on the target and host being used.

 Theoretically, this question is widely independent from RTEMS, because
emulators should be able to run arbitrary target binaries, independently
of the OS these binaries contain.

Some targets have emulators in gdb, for some, qemu can be used, for some
targets, other emulators should be applicable. Some emulators have
special requirements on the host, etc.

> Is there a certain version of RTEMS that's easier to get started with?
Depends on what you are referring to.

Wrt. the RTEMS code base, the "latest version" should always be easier
to use than its predecessors.

Wrt. building the RTEMS code, all ports in RTEMS are very similar, so
the problems you'll be facing also should be similar. The typical
new-comer issues circulate around using the GNU-toolchain (binutils,
GCC) and using the RTEMS buildsystem ("Which flags to pass where and
how" and issues in using the autotools).

Should you be referring to "which target/BSP is easiest", the answer
would be "The target you are familiar with" and "The one you have HW
access to". To newcomers, this in most cases likely will mean pc-based
systems ;)

Ralf