Thread: Sources for new WPILib available yet?
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Unread 05-28-2014, 01:32 AM
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Re: Sources for new WPILib available yet?
Actually, I'm not interested in backwards compatibility. As a guy who does embedded Linux for a living, I'm more interested in seeing the implementation to see what needs to be changed to make it work correctly in a multi-core environment.

You can't just take the uni-processor version and hack it to run on a multi-core. There are race conditions galore intoduced in mutli-core systems because of the 1-1 threading model that Linux uses. And, since the NI-Linux is rumored to have the PREEMPT_RT patch in place, there are a number of tweaks that need to be done in order for the data flow to work smoothly. Not to mention simply knowing what kernel release is being used will tell me a lot about what to expect in the driver model.

Additionally, there's the issue of moving from a big endian PPC to a little endian ARM (let alone VxWorks to Linux). I developed a lot of training materials for Wind River to help customers move from VxWorks to Linux. So, I know most of the pitfalls. I just don't want to spend the first two seasons with the roboRio trying to shake out bugs when I know how to fix most of the ones that will be introduced in the move to Linux.

Thanks,

Mike
Last edited by taichichuan : 05-28-2014 at 01:35 AM.