Donald Walton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I would be interested to know the type of testing eCos has been through. > If it has been successfully tested as part of an embedded aviation > system, I would agree with you. If it has been tested as part of the > embedded system for a printer or digital camera, I would have to > disagree with you.
eCos has been used is a number of mission critical applications including automotive and satellite systems. It has certainly been used in aviation, but probably not in anything safety critical. > > When it comes to developing embedded systems that are safety critical, > one cannot be too careful. > > If there is little interest in using eCos in safety critical systems, > leave it as it is. However, companies and individuals planning to use > it in areas where safety is important may want to rework the area where > there is multiple inheritance or plan to accept the cost of extensive > testing. In such situations, this can be an additional risk factor for > a project. The edict against multiple inheritance is presumably against using it to develop new application code. In the case of eCos, MI is used only within the kernel, applications do not have access to the classes involved, and it is used in a very restricted and controlled way. There is absolutely no possibility of application code encountering MI under normal circumstances. Looking at it a different way: if eCos were a closed source OS, distributed only as a binary library, then you would not know that MI were being used internally. The same is true now, even though you can see the source, the use of MI is not visible. Very little development now goes on in the kernel, it has been stable for many years. So the fear that some sort of programming mistake using MI will introduce a bug is very remote. Changing the kernel to eliminate MI is much more likely to destabilize it. -- Nick Garnett eCos Kernel Architect http://www.ecoscentric.com The eCos and RedBoot experts -- Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss
