Which flavor of Linux for RTEMS S/W developemnt ( was Re: MVME5500 Tester Needed for 4.10)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/16/2011 06:36 PM, Kate Feng wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius wrote :
>
>> * No rtems-4.11 => unsuitable for development.
>
> Gedare Bloom wrote:
>> 2) Any other distro can suffice for released RTEMS versions,
>> assuming you can build the RTEMS tools.
>
>
> Can you clarify what "unsuitable" mean, please ? Does that mean it is
> impossible
> to build RTEMS-4.11 tools and source on Debian or Ubutun 10.04 ?
No, that's not what I meant.

rtems-4.11 is a development branch, whose toolchains undergo rapid and 
occasionally radical changes, which would be hard to follow from extern, 
e.g. when trying to pickup the most recent changes to rebuild 
Debian/Ubuntu packages.

For rtems < 4.11 things are different. Its toolchains are supposed to be 
API stable. I.e. if an external/unofficial rebuilt for Debian/Ubuntu 
will lag behind for a couple of days or weeks, its users will not see 
immedate effects/breakdowns.

> Does
> RTEMS-4.11 require a higher version of Ubutu ?
I don't know, but would not expect so.

Theorectically, the RHEL5-built binary rpms should be runnable on most 
"not too outdated" (3-4 years old) Linux distros.

> I know that it
> is impossible to build RTEMS-4-9 on RHEL4 due to S/W incompatibility.
Yes, otherwise I'd build them ;)

The problem is simply that RHEL4 is such kind of old (IIRC 6 years), 
it's hardly possible to build any current package on it, without having 
to replace a huge portion of the OS's libraries and without having to 
struggle with other issues, which have long been resolved on more 
current distros.

It's the consideration, why I am saying RHEL in general is more suitable 
for server deployment ("Install once and then forget" for the next 5-7 
years), but for development purposes, for which one sooner or later will 
want a more current distro.

Ralf