[etherlab-users] hard-realtime using rtai-lxrt and IGH userspace API

[Stefan Kohlbrecher]

Hi,

my group is developing a robot control application using EtherCAT for
communication between controller and devices. For being flexible and
interoperable we are looking into using OROCOS together with the IGH
EtherCAT master for maximum flexibility. Under the hood, OROCOS is
using rtai-lxrt or xenomai for hard-realtime. Is the userspace API of
the IGH master hard-realtime compatible using these two realtime
systems? Preliminary testing suggested that ioctl calls in the
userspace API lead to switching out of hard realtime.
Being new to hard realtime systems, I was also wondering why normal
locking ( down(&master->io_sem); etc.) seems to be used for example in
master.c. Shouldn't the corresponding RTOS structures
(rt_sem_wait(&master->master_sem); etc. ) be used?

regards,
Stefan Kohlbrecher