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NAME="OVERVIEW.CONFIGURABILITY">Why Configurability?</H1
><P
>The <SPAN
CLASS="APPLICATION"
>eCos</SPAN
> component framework places a great deal of emphasis on
configurability. The fundamental goal is to allow large parts of
embedded applications to be constructed from re-usable software
components, which does not a priori require that those components be
highly configurable. However embedded application development often
involves some serious constraints.</P
><P
>Many embedded applications have to work with very little memory, to
keep down manufacturing costs. The final application image that will
get blown into EPROM's or used to manufacture ROMs should contain only
the code that is absolutely necessary for the application to work, and
nothing else. If a few tens of kilobytes are added unnecessarily to a
typical desktop application then this is regrettable, but is quite
likely to go unnoticed. If an embedded application does not fit on the
target hardware then the problem is much more serious. The component
framework must allow users to configure the components so that any
unnecessary functionality gets removed.</P
><P
>Many embedded applications need deterministic behavior so that they
can meet real-time requirements. Such deterministic behavior can
often be provided, but at a cost in terms of code size, slower
algorithms, and so on. Other applications have no such real-time
requirements, or only for a small part of the overall system, and the
bulk of the system should not suffer any penalties. Again the
component framework must allow the users control over the timing
behavior of components.</P
><P
>Embedded systems tend to be difficult to debug. Even when it is
possible to get information out of the target hardware by means other
than flashing an LED, the more interesting debugging problems are
likely to be timing-related and hence very hard to reproduce and track
down. The re-usable components can provide debugging assistance in
various ways. They can provide functionality that can be exploited by
source level debuggers such as gdb, for example per-thread debugging
information. They can also contain various assertions so that problems
can be detected early on, tracing mechanisms to figure out what
happened before the assertion failure, and so on. Of course all of
these involve overheads, especially code size, and affect the timing.
Allowing users to control which debugging features are enabled for any
given application build is very desirable.</P
><P
>However, although it is desirable for re-usable components to provide
appropriate configuration options this is not required. It is possible
to produce a package which does not provide a single configuration
option&nbsp;&#8212;&nbsp;although the user still gets to choose
whether or not to use the package. In such cases it is still necessary
to provide a minimal CDL script, but its main purpose would be to
integrate the package with the component framework's build system.</P
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