Re: replace a legacy proprietary RTOS (Real-Time executive) with NetBSD!

["Thirupathiah Annapureddy" <writetothiru%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi,

Thanks for the information.

Few other specific questions:
- Is there a message queue/mailbox mechanism inside the kernel for
communication between two kernel tasks? or do we need to go for a
custom implementation.

- is there a semaphore implementation for usage from kernel space? I
could see mutex(9), but not semaphore.

- is there a kernel space timer APIs to handle addition of a soft
timer, deletion, modification etc functions.

- can the interrupts be field in the user-space in case we decide to
port some of the device/IO access code to the user space to minimize
the porting changes?

Thanks in advance,
Thiru

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Mindaugas Rasiukevicius
<rmind%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> "Thirupathiah Annapureddy" <writetothiru%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> We are evaluating to replace a legacy proprietary RTOS (Real-Time
>> executive) with NetBSD as one of the potential and leading candidates.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> - Although man pages are good, it is difficult to figure out the what
>> kind of APIs it provides for a particular OS service for ex:
>> synchronization and communication services, threading services on both
>> the kernel and user side. Is there an architecture handbook that be
>> quickly browsed to find out such info and later refer to the man pages
>> for more info?
>
> While it would be nice to have a handbook (unfortunately, I do not know any),
> manuals provide quite good and up-to-date documentation. Some man pages
> describing common kernel interfaces, which may be a ground to start:
>
> mutex(9), rwlock(9), condvar(9), kpreempt(9)
> spl(9), callout(9), softintr(9), kthread(9)
> kmem_alloc(9), pool_cache(9)
>
> By the way, kernel preemption is currently supported only in x86. However,
> since MI code is in the place, it should not be problematic to extend the
> support to ARM and maybe other architectures.
>
> NetBSD mostly conforms to the POSIX standard (including its real-time
> extensions), so user-level applications can follow it.
>
> Note that these interfaces (also relevant improvements for real-time
> computing) are in upcoming 5.0 release and -current versions of NetBSD!
>
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>> Thiru
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Mindaugas
>