About the eRTOS API

The eRTOS Application Programming Interface (API) is based on the Windows API. This allows developers to draw upon their Windows experience, code base, and development tools, to expedites hard real-time application development.

In this topic:

Path Names
APIs
eRTOS Executable Images
Run-Time Libraries
Unicode

Path Names

Because the eRTOS OS is not aware of the current working directory, you must use full path names for all eRTOS APIs.

API

eRTOS supports a subset of Windows API functions and provides a special set of real-time functions, known as RTAPI (Real-Time API). RTAPI functions are identified by an "Rt" prefix in their names. Some RTAPI functions are semantically identical to their Windows counterparts, while others are unique to eRTOS (that is, there are no similar Windows calls).

The eRTOS API was carefully selected to promote efficient development of real-time application components. eRTOS intentionally does not include Windows functions, such as the GUI-related calls, that are normally used by the less time-critical components of an application. In fact, Windows functions that are not essential to real-time programming, and impractical to implement with deterministic behavior, are not included in the eRTOS API.

eRTOS Executable Images

eRTOS provides two types of executable images: Processes and RTDLLs. Processes are the real-time equivalents of Windows processes. RTDLLs are passive code containers loaded by Processes, similar in functionality to Windows DLLs.

Runtime Libraries

eRTOS supports the Visual Studio-provided C Runtime libraries. Process applications can link against the static C Runtime libraries, provided they do not attempt to call unsupported C Runtime library functions. Processes can also be linked against dynamic link libraries (RTDLLs), which can be used to modularize real-time application code or provide run-time customization of real-time software environments.

Note: No effort is made to modify the provided C Runtime libraries to make calls deterministic.

Unicode

eRTOS supports Unicode applications. A Process can use the wmain() function and accept wide character input arguments.