4. Host Computer — RTEMS User Manual 5.4-rc2 (21st August 2026) documentation

# 4. Host Computer

RTEMS applications are developed using cross-development tools running on a development computer, more often called the host computer. These are typically your desktop machine or a special build server. All RTEMS tools and runtime libraries are built from source on your host machine. The RTEMS Project does not maintain binary builds of the tools. This differs to what you normally experience with host operating systems, and it is, however this approach works well. RTEMS is not a host operating system and it is not a distrbution. Deploying binary packages for every possible host operating system is too big a task for the RTEMS Project and it is not a good use of core developer time. Their time is better spent making RTEMS better and faster.

The RTEMS Project’s aim is to give you complete freedom to decide on the languages used in your project, which version control system, and the build system for your application.

The rule for selecting a computer for a developer is more is better but we do understand there are limits. Projects set up different configurations, some have a development machine per developer while others set up a tightly controlled central build server. RTEMS Ecosystem is flexible and lets you engineer a development environment that suites you. The basic specs are:

- Multicore processor

- 8G bytes RAM

- 256G harddisk

RTEMS makes no demands on graphics.

If you are using a VM or your host computer is not a fast modern machine do not be concerned. The tools may take longer to build than faster hardware however building tools is something you do once. Once the tools and RTEMS is built all your time can be spent writing and developing your application. Over an hour can happen and for the ARM architecture and with all BSPs it can be many hours.

- 4.1. Host Operating Systems
- 4.2. POSIX Hosts
  - 4.2.1. Root Access
  - 4.2.2. Linux
    - 4.2.2.1. ArchLinux
    - 4.2.2.2. CentOS
    - 4.2.2.3. Fedora
    - 4.2.2.4. Raspbian
    - 4.2.2.5. Ubuntu
    - 4.2.2.6. Linux Mint
    - 4.2.2.7. openSUSE
  - 4.2.3. FreeBSD
  - 4.2.4. NetBSD
- 4.3. Apple macOS
  - 4.3.1. Catalina
  - 4.3.2. Sierra
  - 4.3.3. Mavericks
- 4.4. Microsoft Windows
  - 4.4.1. Windows Path Length
  - 4.4.2. Windows Spaces In Paths
  - 4.4.3. Parallel Builds with Make
  - 4.4.4. POSIX Support
  - 4.4.5. Python
  - 4.4.6. MSYS2
  - 4.4.7. Cygwin