Debugger for real-time OS: challenges of multiplatform support

In this paper, we present our work in developing a debugger for multiplatform real-time operating system Jet OS designed for civil airborne avionics. This system is being developed in the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and it is designed to work within Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture and implement ARINC-653 API specification. Jet OS supports work on different architectures such as PowerPC, MIPS, x86 and ARM. Debugger for a real-time OS is an important tool in software development process, but debugger for RTOS is more than typical debugger used by desktop developers and we must take into account all specific features of such debugger. Moreover, we must support debugging on many platforms. However, debugger's code has to be developed for each platform and we faced the problem of porting our debugger to different architecture without developing it from scratch. In addition, the debugger must support work within emulators, because it can expand developers’ capabilities and increase their efficiency. In this paper, we present the architecture of the debugger for JetOS real-time operating system, which provides capabilities for porting our debugger to a new platform in little to no time, and discuss the challenges imposed by multiplatform support in the OS.