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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Getting started with bare-board development
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:17:52 +0000
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Adam Jensen <hanzer@riseup.net> writes:

> * How does one develop and verify a Board Support Package (device
> drivers, bootloader, etc.)?

The Cortex-M4 boards developed for e.g.PixRacer[1], based on STM32F427,
support DFU[2] and JTAG.

Starting from AdaCore's STM32F429 offering, only a very few packages
need to be modified for the BSP: setting up the board's clocks to use a
24 MHz crystal rather than 8 MHz, and terminal i/o via UART7 rather than
USART1.

[1] https://pixhawk.org/modules/pixracer
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Device_Firmware_Upgrade

> * Do the various typical embedded platform profiles (e.g., Ravenscar)
> require any Run-Time System implementation or extension?

Yes, indeed! you can see AdaCore's implementations at [3].

[3] https://github.com/AdaCore/embedded-runtimes

> * Is the BSP and RTS the kind of software that might/should be
> implemented in Spark?

AdaCore have certainly added pre- and post-conditions on a couple of the
tasking RTS components. My feeling is that it would be quite hard to
retrofit SPARK to their RTS. This may be conditioned by trying to use
SPARK to prove exception freedom for device drivers - but things like
volatility, pointers and time would be much better addressed in a
context that had budget for training and support.