Platform project creates an easy-to-use abstraction for launching applications on various hardware/OS platforms. Its main goal is to provide:
- compiler configuration for target platform,
- abstraction of launching main application thread on target platform.
Compiler configuration is provided via CMake toolchain file. It's aim is to set all required CMake variables in order to allow cross-compilation to the target platform. It also handles the basic set of compilation and linking flags for particular platform/compiler pair.
Launching main application thread is implemented by distinguishing the main() function from the main thread. On
desktop systems first app thread is executing directly code from main(). On systems where a dedicated scheduler is
launched (e.g. baremetal RTOS), it is required that in the first thread user has to call some sort of "scheduler start"
function, which usually never returns (at least until all threads are destroyed). Previously mentioned separation
requires, that the main application logic should be placed in appMain() function. On desktop systems this function
would be called directly from main(). On RTOS systems, this function would be used as feed for a new user thread.