Whether you are development a custom OS runtime image, device driver, software library or application for a Compact 2013 device, you need to work with an OS design.  In addition to knowing your way around OS design, it’s important to know how to debug and OS design to identify and resolve problems.

A Compact 2013 OS design can be configured to build OS runtime images in four different configurations, as follow:

·         Release with ship build disabled

OS runtime image generated in release mode is optimized, does not include ASSERT and able to output RETAILMSG messages.

·         Release with ship build enabled (WINCESHIP=1)

OS runtime image generated in release mode with ship build enabled is optimized, does not include ASSERT and does not output RETAILMSG or DEBUGMSG messages.

·         Debug

OS image generated in debug mode is not optimized, includes ASSERT, able to output RETAILMSG and DEBUGMSG messages.

·         Checked

The checked mode is a hybrid between debug and release modes.  OS image generated in checked mode is optimized, includes ASSERT, able to output RETAILMSG and DEBUGMSG messages.

To support debugging and remote tools, an OS runtime image must be built with kernel independent transport layer (KITL) enabled.  To build an OS runtime image with KITL enabled, the BSP for the target device needs to include KITL support.