CiAO: an aspect-oriented operating-system family for resource-constrained embedded systems

Abstract

This paper evaluates aspect-oriented programming (AOP) as a first-class concept for implementing configurability in system software for resource-constrained embedded systems. To compete against proprietary special-purpose solutions, system software for this domain has to be highly configurable. Such fine-grained configurability is usually implemented “in-line” by means of the C preprocessor. However, this approach does not scale – it quickly leads to “#ifdef hell” and a bad separation of concerns. At the same time, the challenges of configurability are still increasing. AUTOSAR OS, the state-of-the-art operating-system standard from the domain of automotive embedded systems, requires configurability of even fundamental architectural system policies. On the example of our CiAO operating-system family and the AUTOSAR-OS standard, we demonstrate that AOP – if applied from the very beginning – is a profound answer to these challenges. Our results show that a well-directed, pragmatic application of AOP leads to a much better separation of concerns than does #ifdef-based configuration – without compromising on resource consumption. The suggested approach of aspect-aware operating-system development facilitates providing even fundamental system policies as configurable features.