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\mainpage

\section overview Overview

BeRTOS is a real-time operating system designed for building applications
for embedded systems, like reference boards, test boards, or custom boards.

It has a modular structure: its components can be used in very different
environments, from 8-bit processor to Linux and Win32 hosted application
(for debug purpose), using a wide range of compilers.

\section history History and Motivation

BeRTOS was born as a collection of useful, highly optimized and fine-tuned
libraries for embedded systems.  Each library had its own scope and could be
used singularly in a project, though they were also meant to cooperate to
build the whole underlying software layer commonly called "operating system".

We have grown it following our guidelines: simplicity and beauty.
These guidelines made it possible to evolve it in a full-featured real
time operating system, with more modularity than many other embedded OSes,
without giving up reliability and performace.

To achieve the highest possible reusability, most BeRTOS components are
designed for fine-grained modularity and minimal external dependencies.
Most non-essential features can be configured out for application with small
memory footprint requirements.

\section features Features

  - multitasking kernel with IPC, semaphores, priority levels;
  - a comprehensive set of generic drivers for a wide range of devices,
    which can be easily customized to the actual hardware: timer, serial,
    adc, ntc, pwm, stepper motors, dc motors, lcd, keyboards, buzzer, eeprom;
  - full graphic subsystem for simple displays, with font support, bitmaps,
    clipping, text formatting, interactive menus;
  - simple console with command parser;
  - readline-like support for command history;
  - entropy generator and random numbers generator optimized for embedded
    systems;
  - checksumming and hashing functions (CRC, MD2);
  - full hash-table implementation with double-hashing collision resolution;
  - XMODEM protocol implementation;
  - RLE compression algorithm;

\section structure Directory Structure

The modules are sorted in subdirectories by their category:

  - app/            : demo applications;
  - bertos/algo/    : algorithms;
  - bertos/cfg/     : configuration stuff;
  - bertos/drv/     : hardware drivers;
  - bertos/dt/	    : experimental object oriented gui toolkit;
  - bertos/emul/    : Qt-based emulator framework for embedded applications;
  - bertos/fonts/   : fonts;
  - bertos/fs/      : file system related stuff;
  - bertos/gfx/     : general purpose graphics routines;
  - bertos/gui/     : widgets for simple displays;
  - bertos/hw/	    : hardware-specific declarations;
  - bertos/icons/   : conversion tool from image TXT format to LCD bitmap;
  - bertos/kern/    : multitasking kernel;
  - bertos/mware/   : algorithms, other standalone code;
  - bertos/struct/  : containers and other data structures;
  - bertos/os/	    : OS-abstraction layers for hosted environments;
  - doc/            : documentation;

The top-level directory contains a few support headers that are meant to be
usable by any C/C++ embedded or hosted application.

\section license License

BeRTOS is provided under the term of the GNU General Public License
(see LICENSE.GPL) with following exception:

\verbatim

As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software
library without restriction.  Specifically, if other files instantiate
templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile
this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this
file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by
the GNU General Public License.  This exception does not however
invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by
the GNU General Public License.

\endverbatim

*/