1. OpenComRTOS Designer (v.1.6) was enhanced with support for C++ and new services were added.
2. GoedelWorks (v.1.1) features a new navigation tree and now generates dependency trees in graphml for easier processing. A utility was created that facilitates importing existing software projects.
OpenComRTOS Designer extensions
OpenComRTOS tasks are normally programmed in ANSI-C but developers can now also use C++. The latter has a clearer syntax, the compiler will also flag more typical programming errors like wrong use of types and has more capabilities than standard C. Of course, the embedded programmers should not use all the features that C++ allows especially if they result in a dynamic allocation of memory. The performance overhead vs. standard C is negligible (in the order of 1%).
OpenComRTOS Designer now also makes it easier creating application specific Hub services. Once added to the metamodel, they become immediately available on the OpenVE visual modeller.
Recent examples are the PMA Hub used on Microsemi’s SmartFusion-II to run functions on a co-processing FPGA and the BlackBoard Hub. A new example of such new service is the DataEvent Hub. It combines the functionality of a boolean Event with the system wide transfer of data. The BlackBoard and DataEvent Hub provide programmers an easy to use a kind of Virtual Shared Memory (with full read and write protection semantics), even across networks.
While above services are new, thanks to the (formally developed) OpenComRTOS architecture, adding them was swift. From concept to integration and test took less than a week’s effort.
GoedelWorks updated
The new release of GoedelWorks is the result of a major rewrite effort to improve the performance between the client and server. The navigation tree was reorganised and new features were added, although most of the improvements were "under the hood". The dependency trees can now also be exported as graphml files, which makes it easier to display and manipulate large graphs by external tools. As not all projects are developed from scratch a utility was generated to import existing software repositories. Once imported, the project’s team can add the missing artefacts like planning and test reports to provide full traceability as required for certification purposes.