[taste-users] New features in TASTE

["Thanassis Tsiodras (external)" <Thanassis.Tsiodras@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings, TASTE
community!

The hard working
people behind taste-dev are happy to share some TASTE-y news with you!
Put simply, over
the last couple of weeks we've done the necessary work to merge a number
of new features into TASTE:

- A freshly-built
RTEMS cross-compiler from the mainline - with Ada support and SMP Leon3/4
BSPs.
- A Leon3 simulator
with SMP support
- Support for
Time and Space partitioning via the ARINC653-compliant AIR hypervisor
- The latest versions
of DMT, ASN1SCC and OpenGEODE - with many new features and bugfixes. Of
particular interest to some of you, will be that builds (and especially)
rebuilds are accelerated significantly.

In detail:

If you  cd
~/tool-src ; git checkout -f master ; ./Update-TASTE.sh .... you will
get...

1. The latest
RTEMS from the mainline

A freshly-built
RTEMS cross-compiler from the mainline - with the usual extra TASTE-y tidbits
(e.g. support for Ada - which is not part of the Gaisler RCCs).
In addition, thanks
to some work from Jiri Gaisler himself ( https://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/devel/2019-February/024794.html
) we can now use the updated GDB in the RTEMS toolchain to simulate SMP
Leon3 binaries from inside the TASTE VM!
Just launch "taste-simulate-leon3"
like you used to - and by default, this will simulate your binaries running
inside a 4 core Leon3 system (https://gitrepos.estec.esa.int/taste/taste-setup/blob/master/misc/helper-scripts/taste-simulate-leon3#L95)
..

As for the RTEMS
build itself, it is built from these commits:

- RSB: 639eed3c77c830a2ac9f36baca21919f8b7bf1be
- RTEMS: 6eae5860507aa19d30b8ad1464896a5e9208a7bd

...and it comes
with pre-packaged:

- Non-SMP Leon2
BSP
- SMP Leon3 BSP
- SMP GR740 BSP
- SMP GR712RC
BSP

Also, the complete
RTEMS testsuite has been executed - on both a GR712RC and a GR740 board
- with all tests passing.

2. Speed!

Various fixups
and optimizations all over - e,g, the Data Modelling Toolchain now caches
all ASN.1 and AADL ASTs, avoiding re-parsing files with identical content
(checksum-based comparisons). 

This leads to
dramatic speed-ups (between one and two orders of magnitude...)
especially in re-builds. 
As an example,
try changing the code for the functional blocks inside "tool-src/testSuites/Demo_C_RTEMS"....
and see the rebuild finish in 2.8 seconds.

3. The AIR
Hypervisor (Time and Space Partitioning)

The MORA/TSP activities
have led to the integration of the AIR Hypervisor inside TASTE.
Yep, we now have
a TSP hypervisor!... 

Look at the example
under "tool-src/kazoo/test/test-air-interpartcomm/" to witness
two partitions hosting separate TASTE functional blocks that invoke each
other's interfaces; and deploy the generated binary on any Leon3 system.

4. Kazoo

These new TSP
builds were also the breeding ground for the development of "Kazoo"
- the new build system by Maxime.

- It is written
in Ada - and as all native code, it runs circles around any Python script,
speed-wise!
- It also sports
a template-based system that allows rapid implementation of all desired
code/file generation.

To be clear, this
is brand new - and as such, obviously it doesn't support all the requirements
we have accumulated in the old build system - over more than one decade...
(SCADE, ObjectGeode, auto-GUIs, VHDL/FPGAs, etc).
But this is our
new baseline for an optimal  build system.

With Kazoo, the
priority becomes clear:  we want TASTE to fly. 

So embedded targets,
speedy rebuilds, type-safety, automatic integration with FPGAs, bullet-proof
static analysis-blessed code.... 
These are the
primary goals. 

In conclusion:

Even though we
are leaving for a well-deserved vacation of 3 weeks, both me and Maxime
are looking forward to your feedback and bug reports upon our return.
After all, TASTE
would not be what it is without your feedback!  

So please try
out the new features - and if something is now broken or doesn't work as
well as it used to, don't hesitate to ping us back.

Kind regards,
Maxime and Thanassis.


Thanassis
Tsiodras
Real-time Embedded
Software Engineer 
System, Software
and Technology Department

ESTEC
Keplerlaan 1,
PO Box 299
NL-2200 AG Noordwijk,
The Netherlands
Thanassis.Tsiodras@xxxxxxx
| www.esa.int
T +31 71 565 5332
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