wiki:Developer/OpenProjects

Version 400 (modified by Gedare Bloom, on 02/16/15 at 21:43:36) (diff)

Make more consistent.

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 uses the Open Project Template, and briefly (1-2 sentences) summarize the project and how it will improve RTEMS.

If one of the projects sounds interesting, but lacks detail, ask on an RTEMS mailing list for details and we can all help scope the project.

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

  • Run-Time Tracing - includes gathering, capturing, and displaying information to the user. We are looking for more trace improvements and visualization.
  • CPU Statistics - Improvements to CPU Usage Statistics.
  • Stack Checker - Improvements to Stack Bounds Checker.

Board Support Package (BSP)

  • Beagle BSP improvements? - More peripherals for the Beagleboard / Beaglebone BSP and other improvements
  • Raspberry Pi BSP Peripherals? Add peripheral support to the Raspberry Pi BSP. We still want more peripherals for Raspberry Pi
  • VESA x86 BIOS - This is Pavel Pisa's idea.
  • Port RTEMS to Microblaze (new architecture port, not just BSP) w/BSP for GDB simulator. Also needs BSP for more complete HW on simulator.
  • RTEMS can always use more BSPs for Simulators? and readily available boards or open cores.
  • MMU Support Implement MMU low-level support code for more BSPs.
  • Raspberry Pi2 - on hold due to unavailability of open information
  • x86 Edison - on hold due to unavailability of open information

API Layers (POSIX, Classic, SAPI)

rtems-libbsd

  • Update the RTEMS TCP/IP stack? - The networking stack in the main source tree 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 may be appropriate for SOC. Given that the stack is working now along with USB, ask about possibilities about Ethernet over USB and Wifi support.
  • port BSD USB stack - This project is complete for some device types. Needs documentation and possible addition of other device types.

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

  • Port the Monkey HTTP Server and supporting infrastructure to RTEMS. Beyond simple porting, this includes submitting patches as needed to the Monkey project, providing a recipe for the RSB, an example and any instructions needed.
  • 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. The eventual goal is to have these toolkits buildable by the RTEMS Source Builder. Here are the toolkits areas identified so far:
    • Define a generic (RTEMS Source Builder based) infrastructure for building and maintaining toolkits.
    • RTEMS BenchKit - benchmark programs for RTEMS
    • RTEMS ConfigKit - configuration file parsing libraries
    • RTEMS DBKit - database packages
    • RTEMSGraphicsToolkit - various graphics and video processing. This kit has had some work done on it.
    • RTEMS SciKit - libraries of general use to the scientific community RTEMS users
    • RTEMS ScriptKit - packages for scripting languages such as Python and Lua
    • RTEMS WebKit - packages for networked devices.
  • Turn the current port of LWIP into a first class citizen that RSB can build. 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.