The world of embedded systems evolves, with devices growing ever more sophisticated and software-centric. In this new landscape, with highly interconnected environments that defy traditional testing and debugging approaches, a reactive, fire-fighting mentality is no longer sufficient. Developers need a proactive strategy to gain continuous visibility into system behaviour—a strategy known as observability-driven development (ODD).

FreeRTOS 11 introduced symmetric multi-processing (SMP) support in the mainline kernel, meaning a single FreeRTOS kernel is managing multiple processor cores. This allows for high performance but also makes the runtime system more complex, meaning higher risk of issues and more difficult debugging. System tracing with Percepio Tracealyzer can offer an effective remedy by providing insight into the system execution.

There have been significant improvements in Tracealyzer over the last years. If you haven’t tried it in a while—or if you’re just getting started—here are some tips and tricks that can be handy when analyzing your FreeRTOS applications. As you may know, the TraceRecorder library automatically records task scheduling and FreeRTOS API calls using the standard trace hooks in the FreeRTOS kernel.

You hear us at Percepio talking about Observability a lot. For customers using our award-winning Tracealyzer tool, this might sound a bit strange – isn’t Tracealyzer about diagnostics, debugging and profiling? Mostly, yes, but let me share why we are putting so much emphasis on our Continuous Observability solutions.

Software complexity grows exponentially, developer efficiency grows far slower. And debugging often takes up 20-50% of development time. More complex, connected systems means increased data flow at the edge, and in the cloud. That leads to increased exposure to vulnerabilities, cyber threats, malfunctions, and bugs with risks that are hard to assess.

Embedded projects take time. No surprise there. Market research indicates that projects often extend well beyond a year. After completion, there is a high risk of intense maintenance and bug-fixing as reality kicks in, so you need tools that assist you all the way from development to deployment.

Tracealyzer version 4.9.0 is now available for download. Installation on Linux has been greatly simplified. A new “standalone” installation package includes everything needed to run the software. Linux users no longer need to install dependencies like Mono or libgconf to use Tracealyzer. An updated new installation guide is provided for Linux users, that is much shorter than before. New users are up and running in a few minutes.

Installation on Linux has been greatly simplified in the upcoming Tracealyzer v4.9. The installation package now includes everything needed to run the software. Linux users no longer need to install dependencies like Mono or libgconf. Instead, a native Linux binary is provided (for x86-64) with the Mono runtime integrated. Most other dependencies have been replaced or removed. You are up and running in a few minutes. We have also spent a lot of time improving the overall user experience on Linux.

After a long pause, I had the pleasure to once again walk the show floors of Embedded World in Nuremberg. It was nice to meet both old and new faces, and to get a thorough update on where the industry is heading.

Linux®-based operating systems are becoming increasingly common among software developers. A whopping 45 percent were using Linux in 2022, according to Statista, which is not far behind Windows. Over the last months we have been focusing on improving the Tracealyzer experience for Linux users and the upcoming v4.9 release will bring major improvements.