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<!-- Author(s):   bartv                                              -->
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<!-- Date:        2000/02/06                                         -->
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<chapter id="overview">
<title>Overview</title>

<!-- {{{ Introit                --> 

<para>
&eCos; was designed from the very beginning as a configurable
component architecture. The core &eCos; system consists of a number of
different components such as the kernel, the C library, an
infrastructure package. Each of these provides a large number of
configuration options, allowing application developers to build a
system that matches the requirements of their particular application.
To manage the potential complexity of multiple components and lots of
configuration options, &eCos; comes with a component framework: a
collection of tools specifically designed to support configuring
multiple components. Furthermore this component framework is
extensible, allowing additional components to be added to the system
at any time.
</para>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Terminology            --> 

<sect1 id="overview.terminology">
<title>Terminology</title>
<para>
The &eCos; component architecture involves a number of key concepts.
</para>

<!-- {{{ Component Framework    -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.framework">
<title>Component Framework</title>

<para>
The phrase <phrase>component framework</phrase> is used to describe
the collection of tools that allow users to configure a system and
administer a component repository. This includes the <application
class="software">ecosconfig</application> command line tool, the
graphical configuration tool, and the package administration tool.
Both the command line and graphical tools are based on a single
underlying library, the &CDL; library.
</para>

</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Option                 -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.option">
<title>Configuration Option</title>
<para>
The option is the basic unit of configurability. Typically each option
corresponds to a single choice that a user can make. For example there
is an option to control whether or not assertions are enabled, and the
kernel provides an option corresponding to the number of scheduling
priority levels in the system. Options can control very small amounts
of code such as whether or not the C library's
<function>strtok</function> gets inlined. They can also control quite
large amounts of code, for example whether or not the
<function>printf</function> supports floating point conversions.
</para>
<para>
Many options are straightforward, and the user only gets to choose
whether the option is enabled or disabled. Some options are more
complicated, for example the number of scheduling priority levels is a
number that should be within a certain range. Options should always
start off with a sensible default setting, so that it is not necessary
for users to make hundreds of decisions before any work can start on
developing the application. Once the application is running the
various configuration options can be used to tune the system for the
specific needs of the application.
</para>
<para>
The component framework allows for options that are not directly
user-modifiable. Consider the case of processor endianness: some
processors are always big-endian or always little-endian, while with
other processors there is a choice. Depending on the user's choice of
target hardware, endianness may or may not be user-modifiable.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Component              -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.component">
<title>Component</title>
<para>
A component is a unit of functionality such as a particular kernel
scheduler or a device driver for a specific device. A component is
also a configuration option in that users may want to enable
or disable all the functionality in a component. For example, if a
particular device on the target hardware is not going to be used by
the application, directly or indirectly, then there is no point in
having a device driver for it. Furthermore disabling the device driver
should reduce the memory requirements for both code and data.
</para>
<para>
Components may contain further configuration options. In the case of a
device driver, there may be options to control the exact behavior of
that driver. These will of course be irrelevant if the driver as a
whole is disabled. More generally options and components live in a
hierarchy, where any component can contain options specific to that
component and further sub-components. It is possible to view the
entire &eCos; kernel as one big component, containing sub-components
for scheduling, exception handling, synchronization primitives, and so
on. The synchronization primitives component can contain further
sub-components for mutexes, semaphores, condition variables, event
flags, and so on. The mutex component can contain configuration
options for issues like priority inversion support.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Package                -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.package">
<title>Package</title>
<para>
A package is a special type of component. Specifically, a package is
the unit of distribution of components. It is possible to create a
distribution file for a package containing all of the source code,
header files, documentation, and other relevant files. This
distribution file can then be installed using the appropriate tool.
Afterwards it is possible to uninstall that package, or to install a
later version. The core &eCos; distribution comes with a number of
packages such as the kernel and the infrastructure. Other packages
such as network stacks can come from various different sources and can
be installed alongside the core distribution.
</para>
<para>
Packages can be enabled or disabled, but the user experience is a
little bit different. Generally it makes no sense for the tools to
load the details of every single package that has been installed. For
example, if the target hardware uses an ARM processor then there is no
point in loading the HAL packages for other architectures and
displaying choices to the user which are not relevant. Therefore
enabling a package means loading its configuration data into the
appropriate tool, and disabling a package is an unload operation. In
addition, packages are not just enabled or disabled: it is also
possible to select the particular version of a package that should be
used.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Configuration          -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.configuration">
<title>Configuration</title>
<para>
A configuration is a collection of user choices. The various
tools that make up the component framework deal with entire
configurations. Users can create a new configuration, output a
savefile (by default <filename>ecos.ecc</filename>), manipulate a
configuration, and use a configuration to generate a build tree prior
to building &eCos; and any other packages that have been selected.
A configuration includes details such as which packages have been
selected, in addition to finer-grained information such as which
options in those packages have been enabled or disabled by the user. 
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Target                 -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.target">
<title>Target</title>
<para>
The target is the specific piece of hardware on which the application
is expected to run. This may be an off-the-shelf evaluation board, a
piece of custom hardware intended for a specific application, or it
could be something like a simulator. One of the steps when creating a
new configuration is need to specify the target. The component
framework will map this on to a set of packages that are used to
populate the configuration, typically HAL and device driver packages,
and in addition it may cause certain options to be changed from their
default settings to something more appropriate for the
specified target.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Template               -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.template">
<title>Template</title>
<para>
A template is a partial configuration, aimed at providing users with
an appropriate starting point. &eCos; is shipped with a small number
of templates, which correspond closely to common ways of using the
system. There is a minimal template which provides very little
functionality, just enough to bootstrap the hardware and then jump
directly to application code. The default template adds additional
functionality, for example it causes the kernel and C library packages
to be loaded as well. The uitron template adds further functionality
in the form of a &uITRON; compatibility layer. Creating a new
configuration typically involves specifying a template as well as a
target, resulting in a configuration that can be built and linked with
the application code and that will run on the actual hardware. It is
then possible to fine-tune configuration options to produce something
that better matches the specific requirements of the application.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Properties             -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.properties">
<title>Properties</title>
<para>
The component framework needs a certain amount of information about
each option. For example it needs to know what the legal values are,
what the default should be, where to find the on-line documentation if
the user needs to consult that in order to make a decision, and so on.
These are all properties of the option. Every option (including
components and packages) consists of a name and a set of properties.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Consequences           -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.consequences">
<title>Consequences</title>
<para>
Choices must have consequences. For an &eCos; configuration the main
end product is a library that can be linked with application code, so
the consequences of a user choice must affect the build process. This
happens in two main ways. First, options can affect which files get
built and end up in the library. Second, details of the current option
settings get written into various configuration header files using C
preprocessor <literal>#define</literal> directives, and package source
code can <literal>#include</literal> these configuration headers and
adapt accordingly. This allows options to affect a package at a very
fine grain, at the level of individual lines in a source file if
desired. There may be other consequences as well, for example there
are options to control the compiler flags that get used during the
build process.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Constraints            -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.constraints">
<title>Constraints</title>
<para>
Configuration choices are not independent. The C library can provide
thread-safe implementations of functions like
<function>rand</function>, but only if the kernel provides support for
per-thread data. This is a constraint: the C library option has a
requirement on the kernel. A typical configuration involves a
considerable number of constraints, of varying complexity: many
constraints are straightforward, option <literal>A</literal> requires
option <literal>B</literal>, or option <literal>C</literal> precludes
option <literal>D</literal>. Other constraints can be more
complicated, for example option <literal>E</literal> may require the
presence of a kernel scheduler but does not care whether it is the
bitmap scheduler, the mlqueue scheduler, or something else.
</para>
<para>
Another type of constraint involves the values that can be used for
certain options. For example there is a kernel option related to the
number of scheduling levels, and there is a legal values constraint on
this option: specifying zero or a negative number for the number of
scheduling levels makes no sense.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Conflicts              -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.conflicts">
<title>Conflicts</title>
<para>
As the user manipulates options it is possible to end up with an
invalid configuration, where one or more constraints are not
satisfied. For example if kernel per-thread data is disabled but the C
library's thread-safety options are left enabled then there are
unsatisfied constraints, also known as conflicts. Such conflicts will
be reported by the configuration tools. The presence of conflicts does
not prevent users from attempting to build &eCos;, but the
consequences are undefined: there may be compile-time failures, there
may be link-time failures, the application may completely fail to run,
or the application may run most of the time but once in a while there
will be a strange failure&hellip; Typically users will want to resolve
all conflicts before continuing.
</para>
<para>
To make things easier for the user, the configuration tools contain an
inference engine. This can examine a conflict in a particular
configuration and try to figure out some way of resolving the
conflict. Depending on the particular tool being used, the inference
engine may get invoked automatically at certain times or the user may
need to invoke it explicitly. Also depending on the tool, the
inference engine may apply any solutions it finds automatically or it
may request user confirmation.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ CDL                    -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.cdl">
<title>CDL</title>
<para>
The configuration tools require information about the various options
provided by each package, their consequences and constraints, and
other properties such as the location of on-line documentation. This
information has to be provided in the form of &CDL; scripts. CDL
is short for Component Definition Language, and is specifically
designed as a way of describing configuration options.
</para>
<para>
A typical package contains the following:
</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>
Some number of source files which will end up in a library. The
application code will be linked with this library to produce an
executable. Some source files may serve other purposes, for example to
provide a linker script.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Exported header files which define the interface provided by the
package. 
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
On-line documentation, for example reference pages for each exported
function. 
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Some number of test cases, shipped in source format, allowing users to
check that the package is working as expected on their particular
hardware and in their specific configuration.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
One or more &CDL; scripts describing the package to the configuration
system.
</para></listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>
Not all packages need to contain all of these. For example some
packages such as device drivers may not provide a new interface,
instead they just provide another implementation of an existing
interface. However all packages must contain a &CDL; script that
describes the package to the configuration tools.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Component Repository   -->

<sect2 id="concepts.terminology.repo">
<title>Component Repository</title>
<para>
All &eCos; installations include a component repository. This is a
directory structure where all the packages get installed. The
component framework comes with an administration tool that allows new
packages or new versions of a package to be installed, old packages to
be removed, and so on. The component repository includes a simple
database, maintained by the administration tool, which contains
details of the various packages.
</para>
<para>
Generally application developers do not need to modify anything inside
the component repository, except by means of the administration tool.
Instead their work involves separate build and install trees. This
allows the component repository to be treated as a read-only resource
that can be shared by multiple projects and multiple users. Component
writers modifying one of the packages do need to manipulate files in
the component repository.
</para>
</sect2>

<!-- }}} -->

</sect1>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Why configurability ?  --> 

<sect1 id="overview.configurability">
<title>Why Configurability?</title>
<para>
The &eCos; 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.
</para>
<para>
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.
</para>
<para>
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.
</para>
<para>
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.
</para>
<para>
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;&mdash;&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.
</para>
</sect1>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Approaches             --> 

<sect1 id="overview.approaches">
<title>Approaches to Configurability</title>

<para>
The purpose of configurability is to control the behavior of
components. A scheduler component may or may not support time slicing;
it may or may not support multiple priorities; it may or may not
perform error checking on arguments passed to the scheduler routines.
In the context of a desktop application a button widget may contain
some text or it may contain a picture; the text may be displayed in a
variety of fonts; the foreground and background color may vary. When
an application uses a component there must be some way of specifying
the desired behavior. The component writer has no way of knowing in
advance exactly how a particular component will end up being used.
</para>
<para>
One way to control the behavior is at run time. The application
creates an instance of a button object, and then instructs this object
to display either text or a picture. No special effort by the
application developer is required, since a button can always support
all desired behavior. There is of course a major disadvantage in
terms of the size of the final application image: the code that gets
linked with the application has to provide support for all possible
behavior, even if the application does not require it.
</para>
<para>
Another approach is to control the behavior at link-time, typically
by using inheritance in an object-oriented language. The button
library provides an abstract base class <classname>Button</classname>
and derived classes <classname>TextButton</classname> and
<classname>PictureButton</classname>. If an application only uses text
buttons then it will only create objects of type
<classname>TextButton</classname>, and the code for the
<classname>PictureButton</classname> class does not get used. In
many cases this approach works rather well and reduces the final image
size, but there are limitations. The main one is that you can only
have so many derived classes before the system gets unmanageable: a
derived class
<classname>TextButtonUsingABorderWidthOfOnePlusAWhiteBackgroundAndBlackForegroundAndATwelvePointTimesFontAndNoErrorCheckingOrAssertions</classname>
is not particularly sensible as far as most application developers are
concerned.
</para>
<para>
The &eCos; component framework allows the behavior of components to
be controlled at an even earlier time: when the component source code
gets compiled and turned into a library. The button component could
provide options, for example an option that only text buttons need to
be supported. The component gets built and becomes part of a library
intended specifically for the application, and the library will
contain only the code that is required by this application and nothing
else. A different application with different requirements would need
its own version of the library, configured separately.
</para>
<para>
In theory compile-time configurability should give the best possible
results in terms of code size, because it allows code to be controlled
at the individual statement level rather than at the function or
object level. Consider an example more closely related to embedded
systems, a package to support multi-threading. A standard routine
within such a package allows applications to kill threads
asynchronously: the POSIX routine for this is
<function>pthread_cancel</function>; the equivalent routine in &uITRON;
is <function>ter_tsk</function>. These routines themselves tend to
involve a significant amount of code, but that is not the real
problem: other parts of the system require extra code and data for the
kill routine to be able to function correctly. For example if a thread
is blocked while waiting on a mutex and is killed off by another
thread then the kill operation may have to do two things: remove the
thread from the mutex's queue of waiting threads; and undo the
effects, if any, of priority inheritance. The implementation requires
extra fields in the thread data structure so that the kill routine
knows about the thread's current state, and extra code in the mutex
routines to fill in and clear these extra fields correctly.
</para>
<para>
Most embedded applications do not require the ability to kill off a
thread asynchronously, and hence the kill routine will not get linked
into the final application image. Without compile-time configurability
this would still mean that the mutex code and similar parts of the
system contain code and data that serve no useful purpose in this
application. The &eCos; approach allows the user to select that the
thread kill functionality is not required, and all the components can
adapt to this at compile-time. For example the code in the mutex lock
routine contains statements to support the killing of threads, but
these statements will only get compiled in if that functionality is
required. The overall result is that the final application image
contains only the code and data that is really needed for the
application to work, and nothing else.
</para>
<para>
Of course there are complications. To return to the button example,
the application code might only use text buttons directly, but it
might also use some higher-level widget such as a file selector and
this file selector might require buttons with pictures. Therefore the
button code must still be compiled to support pictures as well as
text. The configuration tools must be aware of the dependencies
between components and ensure that the internal constraints are met,
as well as the external requirements of the application code. An area
of particular concern is conflicting requirements: a button component
might be written in such a way that it can only support either text
buttons or picture buttons, but not both in one application; this
would represent a weakness in the component itself rather than in the
component framework as a whole.
</para>
<para>
Compile-time configurability is not intended to replace the other
approaches but rather to complement them. There will be times when
run-time selection of behavior is desirable: for example an
application may need to be able to change the baud rate of a serial
line, and the system must then provide a way of doing this at
run-time. There will also be times when link-time selection is
desirable: for example a C library might provide two different random
number routines <function>rand</function> and
<function>lrand48</function>; these do not affect other code so there
is no good reason for the C library component not to provide both of
these, and allow the application code to use none, one, or both of
them as appropriate; any unused functions will just get eliminated at
link-time. Compile-time selection of behavior is another option, and
it can be the most powerful one of the three and the best suited to
embedded systems development.
</para>

</sect1>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Degrees                -->

<sect1 id="overview.degress">
<title>Degrees of Configurability</title>

<para>
Components can support configurability in varying degrees. It is not
necessary to have any configuration options at all, and the only user
choice is whether or not to load a particular package. Alternatively
it is possible to implement highly-configurable code. As an example
consider a typical facility that is provided by many real-time
kernels, mutex locks. The possible configuration options include:
</para>

<orderedlist>

<listitem>
<para>
If no part of the application and no other component requires mutexes
then there is no point in having the mutex code compiled into a
library at all. This saves having to compile the code. In addition
there will never be any need for the user to configure the detailed
behavior of mutexes. Therefore the presence of mutexes is a
configuration option in itself.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
Even if the application does make use of mutexes directly or
indirectly, this does not mean that all mutex functions have to be
included. The minimum functionality consists of lock and unlock
functions. However there are variants of the locking primitive such as
try-lock and try-with-timeout which may or may not be needed.
</para>
<para>
Generally it will be harmless to compile the try-lock function even if
it is not actually required, because the function will get eliminated
at link-time. Some users might take the view that the try-lock
function should never get compiled in unless it is actually needed, to
reduce compile-time and disk usage. Other users might argue that there
are very few valid uses for a try-lock function and it should not be
compiled by default to discourage incorrect uses. The presence of a
try-lock function is a possible configuration option, although it may
be sensible to default it to true.
</para>
<para>
The try-with-timeout variant is more complicated because it adds a
dependency: the mutex code will now rely on some other component to
provide a timer facility. To make things worse the presence of this
timer might impact other components, for example it may now be
necessary to guard against timer interrupts, and thus have an
insidious effect on code size. The presence of a lock-with-timeout
function is clearly a sensible configuration option, but the default
value is less obvious. If the option is enabled by default then the
final application image may end up with code that is not actually
essential. If the option is disabled by default then users will have
to enable the option somehow in order to use the function, implying
more effort on the part of the user. One possible approach is to
calculate the default value based on whether or not a timer component
is present anyway.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
The application may or may not require the ability to create and
destroy mutexes dynamically. For most embedded systems it is both less
error-prone and more efficient to create objects like mutexes
statically. Dynamic creation of mutexes can be implemented using a
pre-allocated pool of mutex objects, involving some extra code to
manipulate the pool and an additional configuration option to define
the size of the pool. Alternatively it can be implemented using a
general-purpose memory allocator, involving quite a lot of extra code
and configuration options. However this general-purpose memory
allocator may be present anyway to support the application itself or
some other component. The ability to create and destroy mutexes
dynamically is a configuration option, and there may not be a sensible
default that is appropriate for all applications.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
An important issue for mutex locks is the handling of priority
inversion, where a high priority thread is prevented from running
because it needs a lock owned by a lower priority thread. This is only
an issue if there is a scheduler with multiple priorities: some
systems may need multi-threading and hence synchronization primitives,
but a single priority level may suffice. If priority inversion is a
theoretical possibility then the application developer may still want
to ignore it because the application has been designed such that the
problem cannot arise in practice. Alternatively the developer may want
some sort of exception raised if priority inversion does occur,
because it should not happen but there may still be bugs in the code.
If priority inversion can occur legally then there are three main ways
of handling it: priority ceilings, priority inheritance, and ignoring
the problem. Priority ceilings require little code but extra effort on
the part of the application developer. Priority inheritance requires
more code but is automatic. Ignoring priority inversion may or may not
be acceptable, depending on the application and exactly when priority
inversion can occur. Some of these choices involve additional
configuration options, for example there are different ways of raising
an exception, and priority inheritance may or may not be applied
recursively.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
As a further complication some mutexes may be hidden inside a
component rather than being an explicit part of the application. For
example, if the C library is configured to provide a
<function>malloc</function> call then there may be an associated mutex
to make the function automatically thread-safe, with no need for
external locking. In such cases the memory allocation component of the
C library can impose a constraint on the kernel, requiring that
mutexes be provided. If the user attempts to disable mutexes anyway
then the configuration tools will report a conflict.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
The mutex code should contain some general debugging code such as
assertions and tracing. Usually such debug support will be enabled or
disabled at a coarse level such as the entire system or everything
inside the kernel, but sometimes it will be desirable to enable the
support more selectively. One reason would be memory requirements: the
target may not have enough memory to hold the system if all debugging
is enabled. Another reason is if most of the system is working but
there are a few problems still to resolved; enabling debugging in the
entire system might change the system's timing behavior too much, but
enabling some debug options selectively can still be useful. There
should be configuration options to allow specific types of debugging
to be enabled at a fine-grain, but with default settings inherited
from an enclosing component or from global settings.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
The mutex code may contain specialized code to interact
with a debugging tool running on the host. It should be
possible to enable or disable this debugging code, and there may
be additional configuration options controlling the detailed
behavior.
</para>
</listitem>

</orderedlist>

<para>
Altogether there may be something like ten to twenty configuration
options that are specific to the mutex code. There may be a similar
number of additional options related to assertions and other debug
facilities. All of the options should have sensible default values,
possibly fixed, possibly calculated depending on what is happening
elsewhere in the configuration. For example the default setting for
an assertion option should generally inherit from a kernel-wide
assertion control option, which in turn inherits from a global option.
This allows users to enable or disable assertions globally or at
a more fine-grained level, as desired.
</para>
<para>
Different components may be configurable to different degrees, ranging
from no options at all to the fine-grained configurability of the
above mutex example (or possibly even further). It is up to component
writers to decide what options should be provided and how best to
serve the needs of application developers who want to use that
component.
</para>
</sect1>

<!-- }}} -->
<!-- {{{ Warning                -->

<sect1 id="overview.warning">
<title>Warnings</title>
<para>
Large parts of &eCos; were developed concurrently with the development
of the configuration technology, or in some cases before design work
on that technology was complete. As a consequence the various &eCos;
packages often make only limited use of the available functionality.
This situation is expected to change over time. It does mean that many
of the descriptions in this guide will not correspond exactly to how
the &eCos; packages work right now, but rather to how they could work.
Some of the more extreme discrepancies such as the location of on-line
documentation in the component repository will be mentioned in the
appropriate places in the guide.
</para>
<para>
A consequence of this is that developers of new components can look at
existing &CDL; scripts for examples, and discover discrepancies
between what is recommended in this guide and what actually happens at
present. In such cases this guide should be treated as authoritative.
</para>
<para>
It is also worth noting that the current component framework is not
finished. Various parts of this guide will refer to possible changes
and enhancements in future versions. Examining the source code of the
configuration tools may reveal hints about other likely developments,
and there are many more possible enhancements which only exist at a
conceptual level right now.
</para>

</sect1>

<!-- }}} -->

</chapter>