CE5.0 - Catalog Overview

Catalog Overview

After you create an OS design in Platform Builder, you can use the OSDesignView tab and the Catalog window together to view and modify your OS design.

The OSDesignView tab shows all Catalog items in your OS design. The Catalog displays Catalog items you can add to the OS design, including BSPs, core operating system (OS) functionality, transport layers, and device drivers. For more information, see .

You can display additional items, which you or a third party create, in the Catalog by importing information about the items in Catalog item (.cec) files. For more information, see .

Displaying Catalog items in the Catalog

When you use the New Platform Wizard to create an OS design, the Catalog items displayed in the Catalog are based on the core OS configuration, CEBASE, which contains functionality associated with headless and display-based devices.

The Catalog and the OSDesignView tab also display folders that are containers for related groups of Catalog items.

The OSDesignView tab appears after you create an OS design, and displays only the functionality in that OS design, while the Catalog displays all the functionality your Platform Builder installation contains.

For information about the icons used in the Catalog window and the OSDesignView tab, see Catalog Item Icon Types.

For information about moving items from the Catalog to the OSDesignView tab, see Adding an Item from the Catalog.

Catalog Item Groups

A Catalog item group describes the interface and functionality exposed by sets of Catalog items. It does not contain the functionality necessary to implement the Catalog item.

An implementation contains the functionality required to implement a Catalog item.

There can be more than one implementation for a Catalog item group. For example, Display is a Catalog item group for display drivers. If you add Display to your project, you are adding a placeholder for a display driver without specifying which display driver.

There are several standard display driver implementations, including ddi_ati, ddi_flat, ddi_rflat, and Mq200. Each standard driver contains the functionality to implement a unique kind of display driver.

OSDesignView Catalog Items

A Catalog item is specifically included in the OS design by a design template or by the OS developer. A Catalog item might also be added during the build cycle if it is a dependency of another item.

The Cesysgen.bat file controls additional batch files, which contain dependency rules that the build system compares against the items in your OS design. The IDE tools automatically include additional Catalog items that are required to support the Catalog items initially included in the OS design.

Each time you add or remove a Catalog item from your OS design, or perform any other action that requires a Sysgen of the OS design, the display of Catalog items on the OSDesignView tab is refreshed. The Build tab in the Output window also displays a list of Catalog items added due to dependencies.

Each time this process is run, the system starts with only required Catalog item functionality and no dependent items. For more information about the build process, see Build Phases.

You can modify the OS design as needed by deleting Catalog items that the design template or OS developer included in the OS design. For more information, see Modifying an OS Design.

You can only remove an item that was added as a dependency after the Catalog item that pulled it in is removed.

To ensure that a Catalog item is not removed if its parent Catalog item is removed, you can choose Add Item to User Specified Catalog Item(s) from the context menu. You can reverse this process by choosing Remove Item from User-specified Catalog Item(s).

For more information about dependencies, see Catalog Item Dependencies.

Adding Drivers to an OS Design

To determine which drivers are supported by your OS design and your BSP, the last stage of the IDE tools' dependency analysis compares the list of core OS modules in your OS design with the list of BSP variables set by the batch file for the BSP you are using.

The IDE tool then automatically inserts the drivers necessary to meet the requirements of your system. These drivers are imported as anchored Catalog items into your OS design.

Each driver Catalog item group contains a default driver, which is set by variables in the BSP batch file and by the DefaultDriver element in the Catalog item file for each BSP. To override the defaults, add the specific driver that you need to your OS design.

For more information, see Adding a Device Driver to an OS Design.

Special Notifications

To examine the list of special notifications associated with Catalog items in your OS design, from the Platform menu, select Review Special Notifications. A dialog box appears that lists the special notification summaries for your OS design.