Two companies (SnapGear and RidgeRun) recently announced dynamic linking support for uClinux using two different approaches. In this whitepaper, SnapGear CEO Rick Stevenson discusses various practical issues from both technical and legal perspectives, and compares and contrasts the two companies' differing approaches. Stevenson writes . . .

“What is the big deal about MMUless microprocessors and how does uClinux help? Because processors without an MMU (Memory Management Unit) lack hardware memory management and protection, conventional Linux cannot operate. uClinux allows a wealth of open source software to be immediately ported to these microprocessors and provides a high level of application stability.”

“Unfortunately, one of the key features lacking in uClinux was dynamic linking — all applications had to be statically linked with their libraries resulting in large firmware images and wasted space. The addition of dynamic linking solves a big hurdle in the race to keep code size down and increase functionality in deeply embedded devices . . .”

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