Enjoy…

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, youtube, LectureMaker, screencasting, USB, eSTATA, partition

Wind River gets a second chance on connecting smart devices into the enterprise world.

One of their previous attempts was Wind’s office political initiative into Embedded BSD/OS. I thought the BSD OS play was great for Wind River if only they connected their robust multi-core OS from the smart device into the enterpise. Now I see and hope that Wind River has learned from this prior effort and is off to a second chance.

The Wind River Hypervisor

So there are a few different kinds of hypervisor: here is a link to a short discription of the server OS, versus their type 1 and 2 hypervisors. Follow Wind River to learn more about their vision for an embedded system hypervisor.

Now of course the cloud is more tied to the embedded system world than ever. Just look at UC Berkeley‘s upcoming annual technology day called BEARS, where CAL’s EE and CS researchers share with the technology industry.

I sure hope Wind River will be attending!

This year’s 2010 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium event is called: From Clouds to Sensors – A Berkeley View

The CAL BEARS 2010 Symposium view from the clouds

Ron has been in the enterprise, embedded systems, and smartphone technical marketing and partner development for the past 15+ years. Contact him to learn more about how relationship marketing can be used to connect the embedded systems hypervisor to the enterprise clouds with effecient use of industry and university partnerships.

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Wind River, Hypervisor, Mark Hermeling, multi-core, virtualization, Embedded BSD/OS, UC Berkeley, From Clouds to Sensors

Panel:

• Bo Cowgill, Google
• Itamar Rosenn, Facebook
• David Smith, REvolution Computing
• Jim Porzak, The Generations Network

Moderator:

• Michael E. Driscoll, Dataspora LLC

The R and Science of Predictive Analytics: Four Case Studies in R

Learn more and watch lecture

Watch this video to learn about:

1. The open-source analytics programming language called R
2. How Google and Facebook approach analytics to predict their web user community’s behavior
3. Where to download R and get enterprise level support
4. How the meeting co-chairs use R

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Predictive Analytics World, LectureMaker, Bo Cowgill, Google, Itamar Rosenn, Facebook, David Smith, REvolution Computing, Jim Porzak, The Generations Network, Michael E. Driscoll, Dataspora LLC, R, Predictive Analytics, behavior

Introduction

Ron Fredericks writes: In yesterday’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement by SocialRep‘s CEO, Chris Kenton, viewers were riveted by his inside knowledge on social media’s word-of-mouth marketing. Chris is well known for his combination of social media marketing knowledge as well as his ability to strip away the facts from the hype.

To set the stage, my own readers have found my marketing FAQ to be a very popular read for the embedded device software industry: Assessing marketing’s critical role in organizational performance. Read on to see if it will blend!

The Marking Bubble Defined

Chris introduced us to the “marketing bubble”, a marketing event in progress now. Chris may be the first to realize and share the underlying problem so clearly. Marketing has always been a word-of-mouth vehicle since the beginning of human conversations – we’re just not old enough to know it!

Check out the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association’s definition of word of mouth marketing. Chris made the case that professional marketers’ tools over the past 130 years have managed to bypass the value of word of mouth by blasting their messages into public and commercial communities to literally overpower the word-of-mouth model using Print, Radio, TV, Mass Markets, and the Internet. Yet the marketing bubble is now bursting as the Internet continues to host an exploding number of social media tools: – tools that extend word of mouth conversation through online social media platforms, popular content management sites, and even a new form of in-person meet up tool that can quickly assemble like-minded individuals into localized events.

Here is a short list of some of the more common word-of-mouth social media platforms that can be leveraged as microsites:

• LinkedIn: A how-to example
• Squidoo: A how-to example
• Facebook: A how-to example
• YouTube: A how-to example [will it blend]
• Ning: A how-to example
• Twitter: A how-to example
• Meetup: A how-to example

These platforms are also some of the leading causes for the marketing bubble. Check out http://www.alexa.com for further research into tools that specialize by industry and/or region.

These microsites often include application programmable interfaces (API’s), news feeds, user profiles, links to friends, groups, photos/videos, chat, and their own markup languages to build relationships and quickly share short conversations. These features are a little different than the more traditional social media platforms such as blogs, forums, wikis, chat, and idea managers.

Word-of-Mouth Customer Relationship Lifecycle

Chris presents an integrated marketing plan that starts with several forms of monitoring to measure influential conversations followed by use of a wide selection of social media tools.

Monitoring Social Networks: Metrics

Monitoring social media activity is one of the basic requirements to managing social media engagements. A company starting up with a social media marketing program nearly always intends to find and engage with their most influential online customers. But Chris goes on to point out that companies often fail in their use of social media marketing tools. The problem boils down to the fine art of adapting to the trends their team discovers after their initial engagements with social media. I call this the company’s analytics culture. There are thee areas that a company can monitor:

• Media: The web pages and web sites that customers use or visit [commonly monitored]
• Technology: The technology behind a company’s products [often ignored], and
• Finance: The financial goals surrounding a company’s sales activity [often ignored].

The problem stems from a company’s tendency to focus too much on web page tools that monitor media, and in so doing, fails to develop an adaptable action plan that includes the other two key domains of marketing operations: technology and finance. After Chris pointed this out in his webinar, it seems very clear to me that a company needs more than trends in page clicks or page visitors to build the business case for change within a company’s executive team decision-makers. Two solutions that have become popular by social marketers in bridging the gap between initial engagement, and adapting their business activities towards the needs of the community, are in the reuse of these two popular tools already in use by most companies:

• Integration of the company’s Goggle AdWords data, and the
• Integration of the company’s CRM – SalesForce.com in particular.

Using Monitored Results: Analytics

Chris and others point out that although the use of CRM tools are well intentioned – a large percentage of marketers do not get the needed monitoring data to successfully adapt to changes or to meet the changing needs within the company’s community. Chris describes how a company can use their CRM as part of an integrated analytics strategy:

• Use reports and analytics stored within the CRM
• Integration of a word-of-mouth program integrated with the CRM
• Creation of an advisory board from the most influential customers identified from CRM

Building a Program

Chris then presented a Word-of-Mouth program built around a Customer Relationship Lifecycle. He goes over some details, shows some steps to be taken, and highlights a case study. I summarize his program from a B2C perspective here:

1. Awareness:
   • Value: Branding
   • Tools: Web ads, Search engine optimization or marketing, Viral video, Targeted community sponsorship
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content
2. Knowledge:
   • Value: Branding and Marketing
   • Tools: Landing pages, Microsites, and Webinars
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
3. Consideration:
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Reviews & comparisons, Hosted chat, and Webinars
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
4. Selection (or when a customer takes the desired action like buys the product):
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Online discount offers, and Hosted chat
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
5. Satisfaction:
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Surveys, Support forum, Support chat, and Customer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
6. Advocacy:
   • Value: Branding and Marketing
   • Tools: Referral offers, Peer forums, Product networks, and Consumer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
7. Loyalty:
   • Value: Branding
   • Tools: Discounts, Insider forums, Product networks, and Customer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council

Some steps along the way in the execution of a word-of-mouth customer relationship lifecycle program:

• Engage in useful conversations:
  • Targeted monitoring and metrics,
  • Managed engagement,
  • Trend tracking,
  • Media, pundit, and influencer profiling.
• Create a cross-functional Social Media A-Team:

• Marketing,
• PR,
• Product marketing,
• Sales,
• Customer service,
• Engineering, and
• Legal.

• Assign a domain to each member:
  • Where are people talking about your domain,
  • What are people saying, topics, trends,
  • What opportunities are there to get involved,
  • What do we want to spend energy talking about.
• Create a place were you can profile these domains, aggregate, and share information:
  • Meet weekly
• Assign at least one “SocialRep” to manage the engagement process
• Buy a solution only when the process is well defined and in place
• Test and continually question monitoring metrics
• Hire a Marketing Engineer, to address data integration

Some Final Thoughts For Embedded Device Software Developers

Most of what I summarize above is focused on B2C relationships and comes out of my review of Chris Kenton’s great webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement. Of course I added my own knowledge and some additional references to help my readers get a fast overview of the landscape.

Building a social media marketing program would have some differences when it comes to software developers focused on embedded devices including:

• A smaller volume of activity
• A scarcity of good marketers and public communicators with a working knowledge of the deeply technical subject matter and its assocated value chain
• A larger barrier between the engineers who make and use software:
  • Those that build the software tools targeting a wide variety of programmers, engineers, and architects,
  • Those that create the run-time device optimized software platforms targeting embedded software engineers, and
  • Those that build the differentiating applications targeting the end user.
• A different marketing framework focused on the collective business and not the individual:
  • See Four Steps to Creating a Gorilla Partnership for some insight on building business-to-business frameworks
  • Perhaps the framework will have unique features for open-source vs. OEM software license models
• Look for social media marketing tools that integrate with software developer frameworks, perhaps as plugins
  • Basic collaboration for developers looks like code check-in and check-out for global teams, not like a tweet.
  • Maybe the next tweet will be a twitter plugin that adds another Eclipse perspective, for example.

Yet there can be no doubt that the short word-of-mouth conversations on microsites will burst the marketing bubble. This would be true for any marketer planning there next engagement, for businesses focused on building software for embedded devices, or for the device manufacturer trying to leverage software developers. Chris Kenton’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement is a good place to start building a word-of-mouth marketing plan. His offering demonstrates the most integrated set of tools I’ve seen – to build a substantial word-of-mouth marketing program.

Thanks to Chis for making it very clear that social media word-of-mouth marketing is not a program to be considered independently of other marketing activities. Instead it’s just a mater of time before the bubble bursts in your market sector. The real question is more of when, than if, a company should add word-of-mouth social media tools to their integrated marketing strategy.

Technorati Tags: marketing bubble, software developer, Ron Fredericks, SocialRep, Chris Kenton, social media, marketing, embedded device, software, word-of-mouth, Print, Radio, TV, Mass Markets, Internet, social media, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Facebook, YouTube, Ning, Twitter, Meetup, microsites, blogs, forums, wikis, chat, idea managers, Customer Relationship Lifecycle, conversations, analytics, Media, Technology, Finance, Goggle, AdWords, CRM, SalesForce.com, Awareness, Knowledge, Consideration, Selection, Satisfaction, Advocacy, Loyalty, Social Media A-Team, Marketing Engineer, collaboration

I chose to discuss Wind River’s VxWorks BSP because of my familiarity with their product line, my understanding of their BSP as a competitive product compared to other real-time kernels, and because of my industry accomplishments working with Wind River’s BSPs:

• Ron Fredericks wins Wind River’s prestigious Navigation Award for designing, launching, and marketing the first online interactive social network for BSP’s. more>
• Ron Fredericks wins Aiysis’ Million Dollar Club Award for nurturing a Wind River partnership between VxWorks and Aiysis DriveWay BSP tool kit that generated over one million in annual sales. more>
• Ron Fredericks co-author’s an article with Xilinx on How to Design Field Upgradable Systems based on FPGA Internet connectivity with VxWorks BSP’s. more>
• Ron Fredericks produces an online video: How to Prototype a Device Driver [or BSP] in Less Than – Wow! – 5 Minutes for a Freescale application processor / communications co-processor System on Chip (SoC). more>

A similar high level discussion can not be made for most embedded Windows or embedded Linux BSP’s today. This is because the BSP for these monolithic kernels are not as modular as a real-time executive kernel such as VxWorks. Indeed other real-time kernel vendors can and do take advantage of the BSP too. But, the VxWorks BSP just took more advantage of this natural separation between board support and kernel tasks earlier in the marketplace and has been an advantage for its customers as a result ever since.

Figure 1 – Embedded device with BSP connected to a host workstation

As shown in Figure 1, most BSP’s today, even those for embedded Windows and embedded Linux, do have a robust set of boot options. In many cases a BSP can be used on its own to network attach to a shared file system where the full operating system and application can be loaded. In this way, a device under development need not be the device where development takes place. The BSP in this case forms the basis for a cross-platform development environment – a big plus for developers of embedded systems. Developers often expect cross-platform development to include a BSP with a limited network stack to load new code onto the target hardware during a cold reset. The BSP might use JTAG on-chip run-time control, RS232 serial port, FTP, Bootp, TFTP and RARP, or even a command shell with a full network stack, as the boot loading protocol. But what ever host to target connectivity is used, cross-development allows a high end workstation to be used for time-saving development along with an easy way to download the resulting compiled relocatable object code or a linked and located image onto an embedded target.

For hardware vendors, the BSP is a very useful partner tool. If a hardware vendor makes a set of boards along with a bus pre-assembled as a subsystem or just a single board computer, the BSP allows its clients to leverage this hardware for software development right away. So a hardware vendor can select major operating systems that meet the needs of its target client base and offer a BSP suitable for these operating systems. Usually the BSP is not a licensed product from the operating system vendor and can be bundled royalty free or under very libral license fee conditions. In this way, the operating system vendor or the open-source community, can partner with this hardware platform as a known reference for direct end products or for development of custom products. The horrible alternative is a slow hardware bring-up using new hardware for the first time to build a unique BSP – a very slow and expensive procedure where few software debug tools are available. JTAG or other N-wire run-control devices can be used with an operating system vendor’s debugger in some cases when a robust BSP is not already available. Silicon vendors and I/O device vendors can leverage this technical marketing strategy too.

I encourage Microsoft and embedded Linux communities to consider improving their BSP strategy to deliver more value from a separate BSP structure too. I also encourage my readers to go ahead and submit comments to this blog post if you know of other vendors with good BSP designs as the marketplace is always changing.

View #1: A BSP is the kernel’s interface to device drivers

A VxWorks Board Support Package provides a standardized interface between hardware and the operating system. A BSP does not directly access hardware. Although a BSP does provide an interface to device drivers which in turn allows the kernel to communicate with the hardware’s assets such as device controllers, the microprocessor (CPU), memory, internal and external busses.

Figure 2 – BSP is an interface between kernel and hardware

Figure 2 demonstrates how VxWorks and the developer’s application software remain hardware independent while the BSP provides an interface to the embedded system’s architecture and hardware assets. Wind River BSPs conform to a standard, introduced with VxWorks BSP Version 1.1. The standard is fully described in the Tornado BSP Developer’s Kit for VxWorks. The BSP provides a common application programming interface (API) and a stable environment for the real-time operating system. The standard interface defines both BSP conventions and BSP validation procedures.

Wind River provides a standardized BSP validation procedure for engineers who are developing their own BSP’s. Validation is very efficient with a BSP designed for VxWorks because the BSP testing can be performed without having to test the operating system at the same time. Unlike Wind River’s real-time operating systems, most operating systems can not separate the testing of the BSP from the testing of the operating system itself making code coverage during testing a much larger and more inaccurate process. The BSP validation test suite provided by Wind River is repeatable and as such can be performed by the company developing a BSP as well as by others because of this standard. When I supported Wind River’s partners back in 2002, a partner could request that the WindLink partner program grant “Tornado Certified” status to a new BSP after passing the validation procedure as part of an overall certification process.

The validation procedure include tests for:
• Package validation
• Installation tests
• Functional tests
• Code review process including certification from the WindLink partner program

The Tornado BSP standard included conventions to be used by developers that fall into four main categories:
• Coding Conventions
• Documentation guidelines
• BSP Packaging
• Driver guidelines

Another strength of VxWorks is that it provides a high degree of architectural and hardware independence for application code because of this API. Application code and VxWorks can both more easily migrate from one architecture to an other because the BSP and related device drivers offer a consistent interface and modular design.

To further illustrate the BSP’s ability to interface hardware to software: Consider the process of laying carpet on your home’s floor. The carpet layer uses two-sided sticky tape to quickly attach just about any style carpet to any architectural floor plan beneath it. The BSP acts like this two-sided sticky tape attaching the embedded hardware to the operating system that uses it.

View #2: A BSP is a set of libraries offering a hardware abstraction layer to the kernel

The BSP enforces a modular design by isolating hardware-specific functionally into a set of libraries that provide an identical software interface to the hardware functions available on an embedded system. See detailed description of some of the common libraries and related files later in this blog post.

Figure 3 – Location of BSP files

Figure 3 shows an example of the typical files supporting a PowerPC target’s BSP and their location in a Tornado installation on a host computer such as Windows XP.

The BSP includes facilities for hardware initialization when power is first applied or when a hardware reset has been initiated. The BSP also includes support for interrupt handling and generation, hardware clock and timer management, and mapping of available local and bus memory. These basic services provide the real-time kernel with multi-tasking services and memory space for the designer’s application code.

Other device drivers and related support services can be included in this set of libraries extending the hardware abstraction to support the embedded system’s custom hardware services. These services would include networking, security, storage, graphics, and input/output to the outside world – for example. The devices referenced by the BSP can be located on a single board computer, a system on a chip (SoC), or on peripheral devices located across a wireless boundary or on a backplane using a hardware bus.

View #3: A BSP supports a host/target cross development environment

The BSP provides support for developers using Tornado tools on a host computer for engineering development such as an editor, compiler, linker, and debugger through a client/server communications protocol between the developer’s host computer and the embedded target’s CPU, hardware devices and on-board memory. For VxWorks developers, the BSP offers an interface to the WDB agent that provides an open standard for cross-hosted programming on a specific target’s architecture. The host computer supports these services using the Tornado tool suite through a target server acting as the communications agent. The target BSP can support a networked development environment using one or more of the following devices: Ethernet, JTAG, serial UART, ROM socket, or custom driver, to communicate with the host’s target server. When an application is complete and the embedded device is ready for production, the WDB agent can be removed from the target’s BSP.

Figure 4 – BSP supports host/target cross development

Figure 4 demonstrates a typical cross development embedded programming model. The WDB client on the target BSP communicates with the host’s target server. This host/target pair supports connecting other software and hardware tools that lower the cost of a typical engineering cycle: design, edit, compile, link, download, debug, test, and deploy.

There are advantages to having a BSP that is separated from the kernel….

A BSP allows target applications to be ported to many architectures.

The three views of a BSP described above are all consistent with today’s engineering needs for a common interface to development tools residing on a robust host computer in support of an embedded application requiring operating system support and services that is modular and portable across many different architectures.

Wind River and its board and silicon partners offer a wide variety of BSP’s for custom off the shelf (COTS) single board computers, and time saving reference designs on more than 12 different architectures. See the BSP web site I designed for Wind River back in 2002:

www.windriver.com/products/bsp_web/bsp_architecture.html

Description of BSP technical features

There usually is a file named target.nr defined in the BSP documentation standards for each BSP. The file contains a list of technical features supported and unsupported for a particular COTS or reference board. The list of features describes what a BSP is expected to do during hardware initialization when the CPU executes its first instructions as well as what hardware assets should be presented to the operating system. This information is summarized here.

Boot Monitor
• Describe the methods and devices available for booting RTOS on this board. (sm, SCSI, Ethernet, vendor-bug ROMs, open firmware, visionWARE, etc).
• Describe the network support available for booting; bootp, proxy-arp, etc…

Default Ram size
Additional supported memory options
Cache support
Flash and ROM memory
• How are ROMs made and installed? (How do they split?) Can FLASH ROMs be burned on board? If so, how?

Timer support in addition to system clock
• Describe routines that are associated with speed of CPU and Timers

Devices supported:
• The chip drivers included are:
templateSio.c – template serial driver
templateTimer.c – template timer driver
templateVme.c – template VMEbus driver
templateNvram.c – template non-volatile RAM driver
• Describe the device drivers for this board. Are there special driver ptions that must be used with this board such as CompactPCI hot swap support? Read the specific driver documentation and describe any special options used with this board.
Memory Map
• Provide a detailed memory map of the local bus, and all additional busses from a bus master point of view. Identify only slave devices actually on each bus, not their apparent address on some other bus. (i.e. if a serial device is a PCI device, do not list it on the local bus memory map, just the PCI memory map). Identify all addresses that the user can adjust by changing config.h, as being software controllable. Identify all bus master devices (DMA) on each bus.
• If VME is present, describe the default parameters for the master windows and how to change them, if possible. (master access means accessing some other board from this board). Describe the default parameters for the slave access windows, and how to change them, if possible. (Slave access means an access from another bus master). The normal VxWorks default is to enable the slave access window(s) only on CPU 0, as part of the routine sysProcNumSet(). Otherwise, slave accesses are not normally permitted.
• If PCI is present, describe the configuration access methods used to access PCI configuration space. Describe any address mapping from local addresses to PCI addresses and vice versa. Describe how the user can alter this, if appropriate.
Shared Memory
• If appropriate, identify the main bus and the type of shared memory support provided, if any. Identify the type of mailbox support and Test-And-Set support used. Identify any special support, or consideration, necessary from other boards in a multi-board system.
Interrupts
• Provide a list of interrupts/exceptions by priority and/or vector number. Describe any special interrupt connection routines or considerations used with this BSP.
Serial Ports
• Identify the default configuration for all serial ports. Document any special considerations: i.e. hardware flow control cannot be disabled thus requiring a jumper to be installed when no terminal device is connected.
SCSI Support
• Are there any known SCSI configuration limitations? Does the BSP support SCSI-1 or SCSI-2? Describe any special connectors or adapters. Does the board include terminators on-board? Is there a jumper to activate the termination network?
Ethernet Support
• Describe the Ethernet ports on the board. Identify how the MAC address is obtained or specified for each port.
Delivered Objects
• Which pre-compiled objects are delivered with the BSP?

Make Targets
• If there is any special information about a specific make target, then it should be explained. Identify any standard targets that do not build or run correctly. (bootrom, bootrom_uncmp, bootrom.res_rom, examples on VxWorks also include: vxWorks, vxWorks.st, vxWorks.res_rom, vxWorks.res_rom_nosym, vxWorks_rom).
Special routines
• Are there any unique BSP routines available to the user?
Divide by zero exception
• Describe exception handling of divide by zero event.
Host-Target Communications Support
• Name of client server agent such as WDB for VxWorks
• Describe additional WDB agents supported for debug support with host if any.

Some details on the collection of BSP libraries

BSP Source and Include Files reside in the following two subdirectories of a Tornado installation:
• TornadoBaseDirectory/target/config/all
• TornadoBaseDirectory/target/config/BSPname

See figure 2 for a view of these subdirectories and files. The subdirectory TornadoBaseDirectory /target/config/bspname contains the hardware dependent Board Support Package (BSP), which consists of files for the particular hardware used to run VxWorks, such as a CompactPCI board with specific semiconductor silicon assets for serial lines, timers, and other devices. The files include:

• Makefile
• sysLib.c
• sysSerial.c
• sysALib.s
• romInit.s
• bspname.h
• config.h

Two target-specific libraries, sysLib and sysALib, are included with each port of VxWorks. These libraries are the heart of VxWorks portability; they provide an identical software interface to the hardware functions of all boards. They include facilities for hardware initialization, interrupt handling and generation, hardware clock and timer management, mapping of local and bus memory spaces, memory sizing, and so on.

The System Library
The file sysLib.c provides the board-level interface on which VxWorks and application code can be built in a hardware-independent manner. The functions that should be addressed include:

• Initialization functions
1. Initialize the hardware to a known state
2. Identify the system

• Initialize drivers, such as SCSI or custom drivers

• Memory/address space functions
1. Get the on-board memory size
2. Make on-board memory accessible to external bus (optional)
3. Map local and bus address spaces
4. Enable/disable cache memory
5. Set/get nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM)
6. Define the board’s memory map (optional)
7. virtual-to-physical memory map declarations for processors with MMUs

• Bus interrupt functions
1. Enable/disable bus interrupt levels
2. Generate bus interrupts

• Clock/timer functions
1. enable/disable timer interrupts
2. set the periodic rate of the timer

• Mailbox/location monitor functions (optional)
1. Enable mailbox/location monitor interrupts

The sysLib library does not support every feature of every board: some boards may have additional features, others may have fewer, others still may have the same features with a different interface. For example, some boards provide some sysLib functions by means of hardware switches, jumpers, or PALs, instead of by software-controllable registers.

The configuration modules usrConfig.c and bootConfig.c in TornadoBaseDirectory/target/config/all subdirectory are responsible for invoking this library’s routines at the appropriate time. Device drivers can use some of the memory mapping routines and bus functions.

Each BSP also includes a boot ROM or other boot mechanism. Many of these import the run-time image from the development host. For information on boot ROMs and other booting mechanisms see Tornado Getting Started manual and VxWorks User ‘s Guide section 8.9 Creating Bootable Applications. For information on target-specific libraries, see 8.2 The Board Support Package (BSP) in the VxWorks User’s Guide and the target-specific reference entries for your board type starting with the file target.nr on the BSP distribution.

Virtual Memory Mapping
For boards with MMU support, the data structure sysPhysMemDesc defines the virtual-to-physical memory map. This table is typically defined in sysLib.c, although some BSPs place it in a separate file, memDesc.c. It is declared as an array of the data structure PHYS_MEM_DESC. No two entries in this descriptor can overlap; each entry must be a unique memory space.

The sysPhysMemDesc array should reflect your system configuration, and you may encounter a number of reasons for changing the MMU memory map, for example: the need to change the size of local memory or the size of the VME master access space, or because the address of the VME master access space has been moved. For information on virtual memory mapping, as well as an example of how to modify sysPhysMemDesc, see VxWorks User’s Guide section 7.3 Virtual Memory Configuration.

The Serial Driver
The file sysSerial.c provides board-specific initialization for the on-board serial ports. The actual serial I/O driver is located in the TornadoBaseDirectory /target/src/drv/sio directory. The library ttyDrv uses the serial I/O driver to provide terminal operations for VxWorks.

BSP Initialization Modules
The following files initialize the BSP:

The file romInit.s contains assembly-level initialization routines.

The file sysALib.s contains initialization and system-specific assembly-level routines.

BSP Documentation
The target.nr file located in the TornadoBaseDirectory /target/config/bspname directory is the source of the online reference entries for target-specific information in our new BSP web site. For a description on how to view the target.nr reference files supplied with our product distributions, see the Tornado Getting Started manual. The target.nr file describes the supported board variations, the relevant jumpering, and supported devices. It also includes an ASCII representation of the board layout with an indication of board jumpers (if applicable) and the location of the ROM sockets.

References

• Tornado Getting Started Manual
• VxWorks User ‘s Guide
• Tornado BSP Developer’s Kit for VxWorks: User’s Guide (some times referred to as a porting guide)
• Tornado BSP Training Workshop – book 1 (see Wind River training web site for BSP class times)
• Wind River’s BSP web site

The Wind River logo is a trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc., and Wind River is a registered trademark of Wind River Systems. Other marks used herein are the property of the respective owners.

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Wind River, VxWorks, Board Support Package, BSP, Tornado, FTP, Bootp, TFTP, command shell, RARP, Network Stack, JTAG, N-wire, Ethernet, JTAG, UART, ROM

• I discovered Dean Lee‘s Code Highlighter plugin for WordPress as the blogging solution for my source code display needs.
• I fixed a word wrap problem in Dean’s plugin.

During my research to solve the word wrap problem, I discovered a few more issues leading me to update Dean’s plugin with the latest version of GeSHI (an open-source project: Generic Syntax Highlighter for php. Highlight many languages, including PHP, CSS, HTML, SQL, Java, Assembler, and C for XHTML compliant output) and removal of unused files. I thought other WordPress bloggers might like to take advantage of the latest code too, so I document the steps needed to build a clean plugin with the latest components.

Flow Chart / Swim Lanes Widget
Below is a Flash widget I built to document the steps needed so you can roll your own up-to-date plugin. Follow these steps and you won’t have to be a programmer to get the benefits from the latest versions of these program components. The widget actively links to the latest PHP files and CSS classes:

Why Roll Your Own Plugin?
I have been working with components and tools on various projects long enough to realize a common problem. Whenever components are used from different projects, such as Dean’s plugin integrated with the GeSHi language components, each file and/or component continues to receive bug fixes and enhancements in real-time without regard to the other components and files. This is natural because each component’s project is managed by a different group.

So now I have an idea on how to fix this evolving problem of diverging code bases: create a flow-chart showing how to assemble the individual components into a final product. Use swim-lanes to highlight the different component resources being used. Document the whole work-flow into a Flash document so links to other web pages and/or live video’s can be included as hot-links to demonstrate the process.

Detailed Notes on the Problems Solved Here
Here are the issues I solve in this blog post:

• The version of GeSHi included with Dean’s code-base is now obsolete. The latest version of GeSHi includes a few bug fixes and a few new supported languages for syntax highlighting. By the time you read this blog post, perhaps GeSHi will have yet an even more improved and stable code base.
• One of the optional modules supplied by GeSHi, PHP samples found in the “contrib” directory; include a recently-identified security risk if included on a web server – such as your WordPress blog installation. Dean’s plugin includes this GeSHi directory by default.
• Dean’s plugin also includes a Mac temporary file called .DS_Store that is not used by WordPress either.

The Components and Their Versions
Dean’s original code has the following versions:

• WordPress should be version 1.5 or later
• Dean’s Code Highlighter v1.1
• Download link:
  www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/code_highlighter_plugin_for_wordpress/
• Dean’s code includes the following GeSHi components:
  geshi.php, contrib and geshi directories
  GESHI_VERSION, 1.0.7.14
• CSS classes for WordPress template style.css file
  www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/code_highlighter_plugin_for_wordpress/#ch_css_class

My rebuilt version of Dean’s plugin has the following components and version detail:

• I’m using Worpress version 2.0.4
• Deans_code_highlighter.php
  Version 1.1
  Download link:
  www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/code_highlighter_plugin_for_wordpress/
• geshi.php, and geshi directory
  GESHI_VERSION, 1.0.7.19
  Download link:
  sourceforge.net/projects/geshi/
• New CSS classes for WordPress template style.css file
  Version 1.0 from Embedded Components
  www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-fix-dean-lees-source-code-highlight-plugin/#ch_css_class

A Final Note
The GeSHi code base continues to go through updates. At some point the logic behind my approach – mix and match the latest code from all resources required for Dean’s WordPress plugin – might break down. Perhaps GeSHi will adopt a new interface that’s not suitable to Dean’s WordPress plugin code, for example. In any case, if you are having trouble getting Dean’s plugin to work, I suggest the following:

Revert back to Dean’s complete code base. Install it as he suggests and try it. If Dean’s original code base does not work, then maybe you are not following the install instructions correctly or perhaps WordPress itself is at an incompatible version. If the plugin works, then try replacing code one step at a time. With each new file change, try your updated WordPress plugin to see if it still can be deactivated, reactivated, and highlights code correctly in a blog post. When the offending component has been identified, let me know so we can work out a new swim-lane diagram for others to follow.

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Dean Lee, Code Highlighter, WordPress, plugin, component, Flow Chart, Swim Lanes, Flash, widget, PHP, CSS, GeSHi

Yet some source code displayed badly – turning a developer’s nice clean style into a chaotic and messy format. I demonstrated the display problem using a perl sendmail script I plan to discuss in a future blog post. The problem had to do with some kind of whitespace word wrap issue.

I tested various features of CSS and DIV tag attributes created by Dean’s plugin and the GeSHi php code. I am happy to say, I found a simple one-line solution. My solution is in updating Dean’s CSS container class to force white space not to wrap.

Here is my solution:
Add this property to Dean’s “ch_code_container” CSS class:

white-space: nowrap;


Here is the complete update I made to my WordPress template:
wp-content/themes/eciWidget/style.css

So now let’s see how this change affects the source code highlight format using my sendmail perl script example. Compared to the image shown in my previous post, the updated highlight plugin CSS style change solved the problem. Now all lines of source code display as one line each, with the horizontal scroll bar used to see the full text:

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Dean Lee, source code, syntax highlighting, plugin, WordPress, GeSHi, open-source

See, the problem starts when the source code to be displayed interacts with the blogging software itself and then corrupts the blog’s own loop-and-display engine. Thus, the blog page becomes corrupt or at the very least, becomes mis-formatted and hard to read. Of course it would also be nice to color code a software snippet similar to a source code editor to make the posted source code easier to read.

I tried several techniques during my Internet search for “WordPress source code formatting”. I discovered a common theme – there are source code display and highlighting methods available – in fact too many are available. So the search became a “needle in the haystack” time sink. And the sad fact, most choices have some severe limitations.

But at last, I found Dean Lee’s blog post: Source Code syntax highlighting plugin for WordPress (V1.1)

Dan’s pluglin for WordPress has all the features I was looking for:

• installs as a simple plugin for WordPress
• usage within a blog post is easy through the use of the pre tag
• source code displays in its own container with line numbers for reference
• a reader should be able to easily select a range of displayed source code and copy it for their own use (without also selecting the displayed line numbers)
• source code display should not break my WordPress blogging software

Dean’s plugin uses an open-source project hosted by sourceforge.net to handle the language-specific highlighting called: GeSHi – Generic Syntax Highlighter for PHP.

GeSHi delivers the other requiements I was looking for in display of source code within WordPress:

• source code should display with language-aware color coding
• code should be open-source with an active developer community
• display controls should include support for lots of popular languages

We do have to modify our WordPress CSS style sheet before using Dean’s plugin. Here is a display of the update he suggests we make to our template…

Update to wp-content/themes/eciWidget/style.css

Here is an image of a popular perl sendmail package with my new antispam patch included…using Dean’s Highlighter Plugin and his default CSS styles loaded into my WordPress template…

As you can see, the display window above highlights the perl language syntax and is safely contained. But, yhuk! What’s going on with the display? The main problems were easily solved with Dean’s plug-in – but let’s fix that word wrap mixed with horizontal scroll bar problem.

Ron Fredericks writes: This is just a note to point out to my readers that drupal is an easy content management system to use. Over time, ECI will be adding more of the drupal features to improve its community experience. Drupal includes multi-user blogging as well as forums and many other core and extended modules. You can see my new drupal personal site in action from here [updated for Drupal 6.4 on 9/10/08].

Drupal 5.x is easy to install: I was able to easily update from drupal’s beta 5.0 version to the latest production 5.1 version. I was also able to add two new drupal 5.x modules called Trackback and Spam to match some of the nicer features I am accustom to here with ECI’s WordPress Embedded Components and Tools Blog Center. I suspect that I will have to switch from drupal’s 5.x Spam module to the akismet anti-spam module as akismet really works great here on my WordPress blog. Let’s see how the Spam module works out!

Drupal site upgrade: I used the 5.1 production release dated 2007-Jan-30. I followed the instructions with no problem what so ever. It just worked!

Drupal Spam module: I used the 5.x-1.x-dev development snapshot, dated 2007-Feb-20. The install.txt file accurately explained the few short instructions needed to add and configure this module to my web site.

Drupal akismet spam module: Currently there is a 5.x-1.2 official release, dated 2006-Dec-31. Having had great experience so far with the akismet WordPress module here on my Embedded Components and Tools Blog, I have opted to try the drupal spam module first.

Drupal Trackback module: I used the 5.x.1.1 official release, dated 2007-Mar-09. The install.txt file had one documentation error that I was able to work around. The work around was to simply ignore this step (there is to trackback.mysql file included in the tar ball):

(3) There is a file called trackback.mysql. You need to
feed this to your mysql:

ON THE COMMAND-LINE
mysql -u user -p password < trackback.mysql

Let me know if there are specific drupal modules you would like to see on ECI’s web site…

Ron Fredericks writes: In a previous post I talked about using a blog site as an influential place to communicate. Why is it influential? Primarily because an individual can self-publish their thoughts while linking to other posts and sites that are relevant. To take this concept one step further, the question comes up “How shall I motivate other bloggers to promote my story/initiative/whatever?” Clearly, if you can just get a whole bunch of influential bloggers to write about your story in a positive way, well then your message would be read and perhaps even accepted by many more people.

The problem is that individual bloggers don’t like to be told what to do with their blogging activity and time. I read an interesting post this morning on Stephen Walli‘s “Once More unto the Breach” blog titled Blogging and Traditional Marketing that describes the situation exactly.

There may not be a single way to use bloggers to generate influence and create improved marketing exposure. However, Steve Rubel‘s Micro Persuasion blog post titled How to Pitch Into the Long Tail News Curve describes how to work with bloggers more effectively:

• Identify Leading Blog Influencers
• Plant the Seed with the Bloggers
• Hit the Mainstream Press
• Regenerate the Story with Other Bloggers

But the answer was clearly explained by Stephen, take the time to build a relationship with a blogger before you ask them to help you create influence or build marketshare.

Reference:
Morgan Stanley: An Update from the Digital World: from Morse Code to blogs, 2004

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, motivate, promote, Stephen Walli, Once More unto the Breach, Marketing, Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion, Long Tail, Influence