Operating System Abstraction Layer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. After links have been created, remove this message.
This article has been tagged since November 2006.

OSAL (Operating System Abstraction Layer)

When writing code that requires porting onto multiple software/hardware platforms, building the code on an abstraction of the Operating system decreases porting time and porting complexity. OSAL deals with presenting an abstraction of the common system functionality that is offered by any Operating system by the means of providing meaningful and easy to use Wrapper functions that in turn encapsulate the system functions offered by the OS to which the code needs to be ported to.

The OSAL provides an application programming interface (API) to an abstract real time operating system. A well designed OSAL then provides implementations of this API for several Real Time Operating Systems(vxWorks, eCos, RTLinux). Implementations may also be provided for non Real Time Operating Systems, allowing the abstracted software to be developed and tested in a developer friendly desktop environment.

In addition to the OS APIs, the OS Abstraction Layer project may also provide a Hardware Abstraction Layer, designed to provide a portable interface to hardware devices such as memory, I/O ports, and non-volatile memory. To facilitate the use of these APIs, OSAL generally includes a directory structure and set of makefiles that facilitate building a project for a particular OS and hardware platform.

Implementing projects using OSAL allows for development of portable embedded system software that is independent of a particular Real Time Operating System. It also allows for embedded system software to be developed and tested on desktop workstations, providing a shorter development and debug time.