This is a partial roadmap for the project, composed of the currently undergoing efforts, and other developments which are already planned to start before Q2 2006. This roadmap will likely be complemented by other tasks over time, this is just a somewhat sketchy vision of the next major steps for which we do have an immediate plan and the resources to achieve them.
Issues related to the usual debugging and extension of existing features or skins are not covered here, Dmitry, Gilles, Jan and the Uni-Hannover crew are usually taking care of these depending on the code in question, with the help from other contributors; let's just consider those issues as implicit, usual business for now. In any case, the Xenomai-core list is open for discussing the matter and filling the gaps in the roadmap. o Web site. - Bruno is working on this. His basic idea of the contents is about being clear, simple and informational. Crafting a useful and lively site is something of a daunting and tireless task, so if you feel helping, just drop him a mail. ETA: October 20 (initial version). o Xenomai 2.0 release ETA: October 22. It's a bit early to define a timeframe for 2.1, we first need to wait for the feedback we get with 2.0. Between both releases, updates (2.0.1 and so on) will be made on a regular basis. o Automated benchmarking. - We are still considering the best way to do that; actually, my take is that we would just need to bootstrap the thing and flesh it out over time, writing one or two significant benchmark tests to start with, choosing a tool to plot the collected data and push the results to some web page for public consumption on a regular basis, but so far, we did not manage to spark this. It's still in the short-term plan, though, because we currently have neither metrics nor data to check for basics, and we deeply need both of them now. ETA: Q4 2005. o Build system revamping. - In order to allow binding the Xenomai core statically to the Linux kernel while keeping the ability to have it as loadable modules, we would need to refactor a number of things in the existing build system. We are going to do exactely that, which should make the use of Xenomai in embedded setups more straightforward and efficient. ETA: Q4 2005. - Heikki has a plan to merge the ppc32 and ppc64 trees so that we would track the same refactoring effort than the PPC kernel folks are undertaking. ETA: unspecified. o Architecture ports. - Analog Devices (http://www.analog.com/) have just offered the project two Blackfin boards (bf533 and bf537) running uClinux, so that we can first port Adeos over this architecture, then the Xenomai core of course. ETA: Adeos port, Q4 2005. Xenomai port, Q1 2006. - An ARM port is finally underway (yes, really, for sure, no kidding, I swear it!). For now, what we have is an almost working Adeos/I-pipe patch, on an Integrator CP board running an ARM1136 core. Stelian Pop will tell you more as the work progresses. ETA: Q1 2006. o Kernel ports. - We are going to backport Xenomai over 2.4, initially targeting the PPC architecture. I do believe that Xenomai will progress faster by confronting itself to low-end hardware, which implies that we should also support the kernel architecture which is running most of such hardware, and will likely keep on doing so for a long time. For this task, we will make good use of the boards the Denx's people will give us access to. This task depends on the build system revamping to be achieved. ETA: Q1 2006. o Scalability. - Gilles is going to work on improving the scalability of the timer management code, so that a large number of outstanding timers would be more efficiently supported. This is particularly important when it comes to port telecom-oriented applications from traditional RTOS to Xenomai: those applications could just create an insane number of concurrent timers the way they are usually implemented. ETA: Q1 2006. -- Philippe.