Thanks for your insightful response. I'll pass the responses along to my bosses and see which way they want to process from here.
Have a great day, Don Walton On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 16:14 +0000, Nick Garnett wrote: > 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
