bits/wordsize.h

[Wolfram Wadepohl]

I think we are talking about different things. I'm absolutely unfamiliar 
with FreeType and it may be that Ralf is totally right relating to 
FreeType. I don't know. That is not the thing I wanted to point out.

Generally RTMES lacks in support of many widely available and also used 
features, if standard or not, to implement control systems, which are 
tightly integrated into SCADA. Especially in networking I reached the point 
to make a decision about the future: RTEMS or GNU/LINUX.

It is not the matter of a simple definition. We must frequently implement 
3rd party code into the system, mostly developed for Windows or GNU/LINUX 
sytems.

In the automation world a system works for 10 or 15 years but not as a 
static one, rather as a dynamic. So we have to keep track in control 
software with the evolution and roll out releases to incorporate all the 
new technologies if standard conform or not.

Just as an example: I learned that the networking stack is an very old BSD 
relict and many RTEMS user would apreciate a current stack including IPv6. 
But no one takes the effort to update to a current release. For a small to 
medium sized enterprise, like us,  this project is also too big.

What I want to point out is, that the community is currently not able to 
carry out this work. When we are faced with IPv6 as a asolutely _must_ 
_have_? In months, years, decades?

Not the decision about bits/wordsize.h is in my mind. Shall we stay with 
RTEMS or shall we move to GNU/LINUX. I'm convinced of RTEMS but it gets 
harder and harder to convince others (managagement, sales, customers). And 
I do not know how RTEMS evolve, neither direction nor timeline. And this 
makes it difficult to get funds for development of RTEMS components.


Ralf Corsepius schrieb:
> On 04/18/2011 08:06 AM, Wolfram Wadepohl wrote:
>> this is the time to jump into the discussion and open a more 'political'
>> thread.
>>
>> Yes, Ralf is right. In theory. On the other hand Sebastien is right,
>> because he wants to get a widely used part of software working on 'his'
>> (i. e. our) RTEMS.
>
>> The resulting question is IMHO essential for the future of RTEMS in
>> industrial projects: How much non standard but widely used 'junk' do we
>> adopt or allow? And how get we this done?
>
> Well you can expect us to rucksack RTEMS with hacks to work around bugs
> in arbitrary applications.
>
> Please check freetype's sources: As far as I can gather, what they are
> doing is to utilizes a non-documented, glibc private, internal define to
> derive some pointer sizes - This approach lacks generality and will
> inevitably fail somewhere.
>
>
> As others previously said, this situation is far from being unusal. It's
> a bug in an application, nothing more, nothing less and nothing to fret
> about.
>
> It's what system-integrators and packagers (esp. under Linux) deal with
> every day.
>
> C.f. favorite OS's FLOSS packages and you'll find that many of these
> packages require patches, whose only purpose is to adopt packages to
> their OS's specifics, because the upstream maintainers did not take
> something into account.
>
> That said: Providing upstreams with feedback about such issues (and
> possibly to send patches/fixes), is one of the foundations FLOSS is
> based on.
>
> Ralf
>

-- 
Wolfram Wadepohl, Forschung & Entwicklung
E&K AUTOMATION GMBH, Werk Reutlingen