{"id":1915,"date":"2011-06-20T08:49:31","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T07:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:35:07","slug":"on-the-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2011\/06\/20\/on-the-move\/","title":{"rendered":"On the move"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently talked<\/a> about the process that might be applied to the selection of an embedded operating system and I hope that these guidelines are useful. I am currently working on a Web seminar on this topic, so I would welcome any input. However, developers tend to stick with a particular OS [or, at least, with a particular OS vendor] – recent research<\/a> suggested that only about 20% of developers anticipated a change of OS for their next project.<\/p>\n

I started thinking about why there is this apparently high degree of loyalty …<\/p>\n

I do not think that there is a single, simple reason why embedded software engineers choose to use the same OS time and again. One motivation is that embedded guys have a pragmatic conservatism: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Although that attitude is quite reasonable, I think that we can identify two specific reasons not to change OS:<\/p>\n

1) Vendor satisfaction. If the level of support and quality of documentation is very good or excellent, that is definitely a reason to stick with a particular OS vendor [as it is with almost any product].<\/p>\n

2) Skills and IP lock-in. The technical characteristics of a given OS permeate the application code and the skill set of the team. This has primarily two manifestations:<\/p>\n

a) Drivers and middleware are often very specific to a particular OS. Moving to a new OS implies the acquisition of new skills and rewriting of a lot of code.<\/p>\n

b) The application program interface [API] ties the application code to the OS and also represents part of the team’s skill set. It is true that many RTOS products have a proprietary API. Moving to another OS would require changes to the application code. Alternatively, many developers us an OS abstraction layer to protect themselves from such a change – only the layer needs to be modified to accommodate a change in OS. Another approach is to embrace a standard and the common API standard is POSIX. Although this is the native API for Linux, it is also supported by many RTOS products and its use provides a degree of code portability.<\/p>\n

If you are sticking with a particular OS for other reasons, I would be interested to hear by comment or email<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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