wiki:Developer/OpenProjects

Version 369 (modified by Ben Gras, on 01/29/15 at 20:30:05) (diff)

Link to newly created beagle bsp projects page

Open Projects

Welcome! Whether you're here because of Summer of Code (SOC) or just want to scratch an itch to hack, we invite you to peruse our projects and ask about them on the RTEMS mailing list or IRC. If you plan to submit a proposal to do something for the RTEMS Project as part of a SOC, see Getting Started for SoC Students. RTEMS projects span kernel hacking, adding support for a new board (BSP), improving the development environment, developing tests, and more.

If you want to get your feet wet with RTEMS then check out our small projects page where you can find projects that require little coding skill and are appropriate for those new to RTEMS or open source software projects. If you are interested in one of these projects but are not able to code and test it yourself, consider sponsoring one of the core RTEMS developers to do it for you. Volunteering or sponsoring is how things get done -- users keep RTEMS development alive!

Most of these projects will take between a few weeks and a few months of effort by a person who is familiar with the general use of GNU/Linux and GNU tools. Many RTEMS projects are done by student or volunteer coders, so we try to define small projects or subtasks that can be completed and committed individually. Most of the projects are feasible as a Summer of Code project. Since some projects have multiple steps, students should work with prospective mentors to define the scope of work in their proposal. Similarly, some projects might be a starting point for a class project or graduate thesis.

Overview

The order of projects in the list does not reflect their importance, difficulty, or feasibility. Our project list is not exclusive: if you have an idea, solicit feedback from the project's mailing list or IRC channel; many developers sit in IRC and check it (and their email) infrequently throughout the day, so be patient! There may or may not be enough work on a project to constitute an SOC project, and some of these are past SOC projects. If you are interested in one of these, please ask on the mailing list or IRC.

Projects in Bold text are higher priority simply meaning that users or developers have expressed a lot of interest in such projects. Projects in Italic text have had some work done and may need an updated description, might be complete already, and may or may not have sufficient work remaining.

If you have a new project add it to the appropriate list below, link to a wiki page that follows the recommended Open Project Template?, and briefly (1-2 sentences) summarize the project and how it will improve RTEMS.

Recent Project Suggestions

The following have been suggested on the mailing list or by developers but have not yet received detailed write ups (if they are even needed). The key to this list is that they are recent ideas. That generally means that they are of importance to the project but we haven't yet had time to create a work break down.

If one of these sounds interesting, ask on an RTEMS mailing list for details and we can all help scope the project. These are in absolutely no order. Do not think the order of this list is indicative of importance, size of project, or anything else. :)

  • Port RTEMS to Microblaze w/BSP for GDB simulator. Also eeds BSP for more complete HW on simulator.
  • Add recipes to RTEMS Source Builder for packages in rtems-addon-packages and graphics toolkit.
  • Add simulator recipes to RTEMS Tools for more simulators. Many more are supported by older simscripts.
  • Complete conversion of coverage reporting to Python and integration into RTEMS Tools. SOCIS 2014 code works but is not production worthy. GCOV support could use work and generation of gcov reports as part of our output.
  • Add interface compliance tests for rest of POSIX API.
  • More peripherals for Raspberry Pi
  • Complete support for Edison
  • VESA x86 BIOS - This is Pavel Pisa's idea.
  • Continued work on RTEMS/Pok/VM effort.
  • rtems-testing and RSB improvements -run gcc tests
  • trace improvements and visualization

Testing

Testing a large body of software like RTEMS is in a continual state of improvement. There is always a need for more test cases and easier ways to run them all and decode the results. In addition, we want to be able to run all tests on as many hardware and simulator configurations as possible. Testing doesn't sound exciting to most people but when you combine the breadth of what we need to test with our desire for 100% instruction and branch path coverage, you get some very interesting and challenging work.

Some of the identified activities which would augment our testing capabilities are listed here:

Tools and Development Environment

RTEMS applications are cross-compiled on a development host to produce executables that are transferred to and executed on target systems. The projects in this section focus on the host side of that equation. This means they will run on a developer's computer and possibly communicate with embedded hardware.

The following areas have been identified for projects related to improving RTEMS development:

RTEMS Run-Time Oriented

The projects in this category are more focused on the development of software that runs on RTEMS on target hardware.

Executive (SuperCore, SuperCoreCPU, libcpu): a.k.a. kernel

Debugging

Board Support Package (BSP)

  • RTEMS can always use more BSPs for Simulators?. Being able to test, debug, and perform coverage analysis on simulators is critical to the ongoing success of the project.
  • We always welcome new BSPs for useful targets. Of special interest are readily available boards and open cores.
  • MMU Support Implement MMU low-level support code for more BSPs.
  • Raspberry Pi BSP Peripherals? Add peripheral support to the Raspberry Pi BSP.
  • Beagle BSP improvements? - More peripherals for the Beagleboard / Beaglebone BSP and other improvements

API Layers (POSIX, Classic, SAPI)

rtems-libbsd

  • Update the RTEMS TCP/IP stack? - The networking stack is old and showing it. This project is actively underway. At a high level, this effort requires porting the TCP/IP stack and providing support functional equivalents of multiple BSD kernel constructs. This project has many subprojects many of which are appropriate for SOC.
  • port BSD USB stack

Languages

  • Mono On RTEMS?
  • Port the Javascript V8 engine to RTEMS. V8 is high performance JavaScript engine written in C++ and embeddable in C++ applications. With V8 it would be easier to build web servers with javascript and even run js framework node.js.

Libraries and Applications

  • Identify and implement the functionality currently missing in dup()
  • Port Transparent IPC (http://tipc.sourceforge.net/index.html) to RTEMS
  • Implement a Simple Line Editor. Existing code can be refactored for a starting point.
  • Dynamic Object File Loading (RTL)? lets a base application with RTEMS dynamically load the rest of the application. The dynamic parts can be optional features and never loaded, or upgraded replacements for parts of the application.
  • RTEMS Toolkits - We are defining collections of libraries and support programs which make it easier to get started for certain types of applications. We haven't identified all potential toolkits or components. Each potential component must be evaluated for license and appropriateness for use in an embedded environment like RTEMS. We also should define some guidelines about creating and maintaining toolkits in general. Here are the toolkits areas identified so far:
  • Turn the current port of LWIP into a first class citizen. Submit port, make target independent, create maintenance plan.
  • IDL/COM? Support for RTEMS.
  • Make Addon Package? - write a tool to help other developers with Libraries, Languages, and Applications

Retired Projects

The following projects are complete or pending.

Obsolete Projects

Some projects have been proposed that are viewed as being of minor use. This list is meant to provide a way to avoid wasted effort on projects that are not widely desired. However, projects on this list might still be useful to someone, given a motivated individual to work on them.