Announcing OpenPicoRTOS v1.8.x & future strategy.

[jnaulet]

Two new branches have appeared : v1.8.x & v.1.7.x-backports.

The new v1.8.x turns OpenPicoRTOS into a complete standalone kernel. No external BSP will be required to build it, you will just need a toolchain.

Of course, this makes ports a little bit more complex, as they now have to provide the boot/startup for every device supported. But this makes new ports so much easier in the end ! I kept an exception for AVRs, as it doesn't seem wise to hijack avr-gcc just to make it fit the bill.

The v1.7.x-backports will still continue to work the same way as before (a.k.a always trying to find a workaround to make the system run on various BSPs), but won't be maintained as heavily. Only obvious bugfixes and easy to port improvements from the v1.8.x will be made. This will ensure people using the pico-sdk for example & are happy with the way it works can still benefit from some level of support.

Port of the c2000/c28x architecture has been remade from the ground up & has vastly improved compared to the version you could find in the original picoRTOS. It probably doesn't share a single line of code with it, so now it's back stronger and better (& with tested drivers).

Next move in the v1.8.x series will be to add PowerPC e200z4 & e200z7 support (in single core & SMP). This will take some time as someone broke into my car last month and stole the eval boards i bought, i need to order new ones to finish the job & they're not exactly cheap.

I ordered some RISC-V boards btw but i'm not sure i won't move out of Sweden before they arrive, so the risc-v support might take longer than expected, too.