Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:13:52 -0500

Ernest L. Williams Jr. wrote:

In the case of an ioc application, the application source code does not
change between a vxWorks 5.5.x and vxWorks 6.x kernel.

Sure; in this case the branch would only be needed to give you the two

separate build trees, until you can get the vxWorks 5.5.x IOCs upgraded

to vxWorks 6.x - I'm assuming that this would be one of the main points

of introducing vxWorks 6 IOCs in the first place. As I said, it also

gives the engineer responsible for the IOC area an incentive to upgrade

his/her IOCs quickly...

However, in the case of a "share top" which contains drivers such as
vxStats there will be an impact.  So, vxStats is riddle with "ifdefs" or
a new branch is made.  In the case of vxStats we will be working on some
abstraction layer to hide vxWorks API changes.

Actually I would expect vxStats to be the one support application that

really would have to be different for different versions of vxWorks,

since it probably relies on the OS APIs that tend to be on the fringes

of normal functionality and thus change between major versions. The

advantage of starting a new IOC branch in this case is that you can link

to a completely different vxStats support application for vxWorks 6, and

you wouldn't need any of the ifdef stuff or an abstraction layer at all

(Actually you can do that with a different target architecture too, you

just have to create a configure/RELEASE.Common.vxWorks6-ppc604_long file

in each IOC area to override the configure/RELEASE setting).

The compiler options are actually CPU specific and BSP specific.
One example is the altivec support, but you already handle this with an
altivec suffix in the target name.  I agree that the options may not be
necessary always.

Adding the altivec really makes it a different CPU, so it has to be a

different target architecture. I'd be interested in any other examples

you can find though.

- Andrew
--
The right to be heard does not automatically include
the right to be taken seriously. -- Hubert H. Humphrey

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System