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QNX Software Development Platform
QNX SDP is a cross-compiling and debugging environment, including an IDE and command-line tools, for building binary images and programs for target boards running the QNX OS 8.0.
OS Components & Operations
Building Embedded Systems
The Building Embedded Systems guide is intended for developers who are developing or building BSPs for QNX OS embedded systems.
OS Images
OS images are files that contains the OS, your executables, and any data files that might be related to your programs.
Deciding what goes on the target
Depending on your system requirements, you will need to transfer different combinations of the IPL, OS image and filesystems to your target.

QNX Momentics IDE User's Guide
This User's Guide describes version 8.0 of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that's part of the QNX Tool Suite.
QNX Software Development Platform
QNX SDP is a cross-compiling and debugging environment, including an IDE and command-line tools, for building binary images and programs for target boards running the QNX OS 8.0.
- Quickstart Guide
- System Architecture
  The System Architecture guide accompanies the QNX OS and is intended for both application developers and end-users.
- OS Components & Operations
  - Boot Optimization Guide
    The Boot Optimization Guide describes techniques you can use to reduce the time from your board's initial power on until you have a fully functional QNX system running on the board.
  - Building Embedded Systems
    The Building Embedded Systems guide is intended for developers who are developing or building BSPs for QNX OS embedded systems.
    - Overview
      QNX systems are built from the QNX OS standard release components, the architecture- and board-specific files provided in QNX BSPs, and customer and third-party components.
    - Working with QNX BSPs
      Before you attempt to write a new BSP or modify an existing one, it is helpful to know how to use a BSP.
    - Initial Program Loaders (IPLs)
      IPLs first set up the minimum environment needed to execute their compiled C code, then find the OS image and load it into memory, and then jump to the QNX startup code.
    - Startup Programs
      The first program to run in a bootable OS image is the startup program; it completes the system configuration, then launches the OS kernel.
    - Kernel Callouts
      Kernel callouts are standalone pieces of code (or code fragments) that the kernel uses to perform hardware-specific functions. These callouts don't need to be statically linked to the kernel.
    - System Page
      The system page contains essential information about the system, including the system page's size, information about the hardware platform (including IRQs and the CPU), the cache size, and the location of kernel callouts in memory.
    - OS Images
      OS images are files that contains the OS, your executables, and any data files that might be related to your programs.
      - Deciding what goes on the target
        Depending on your system requirements, you will need to transfer different combinations of the IPL, OS image and filesystems to your target.
      - Building an OS image
        An OS image is created by a program called mkifs (make image filesystem), which accepts information from two main sources: its command line and a buildfile. You can change the buildfile to configure the OS image.
      - Building a flash filesystem image
        If your application requires a writable filesystem and you have flash memory devices on your embedded system, you can use a QNX OS flash filesystem driver to provide a POSIX-compatible filesystem.
      - Creating a new filesystem on your target
        You can use QNX utilities to create a new filesystem on your target.
      - Combining multiple image files
        Combining the IPL, an OS image (IFS) created by mkifs, and a flash filesystem image created by mkefs can be useful or even required.
    - OS Image Buildfiles
      You can edit OS image buildfiles to configure OS images.
    - IPL Library
      The IPL library contains a set of routines for building a custom IPL.
    - Startup Library
      The startup library contains a rich set of routines ranging from high-level functions called by main() to utility functions for performing specific startup tasks.
    - Debugging QNX Embedded Systems
      The microkernel architecture of QNX OS means that debugging QNX embedded systems can be different from debugging other embedded systems.
    - Sample Buildfiles
      This appendix contains sample buildfiles that you can modify to support your hardware platform and your implementation requirements.
    - Glossary
  - Customizing a BSP
    While QNX provides Board Support Packages (BSPs) for many common platforms and their individual variants, in some cases, you need a BSP for a board that QNX does not provide. If this is the case, you can modify a QNX BSP or develop your own.
  - Device Publishers Developer's Guide
  - High Availability Framework Developer's Guide
  - High-Performance Networking Stack (io-sock) User's Guide
    This guide contains instructions for implementing and using the QNX OS High-Performance Networking Stack and its manager, io-sock.
  - PCI Server User's Guide
  - Performance Tuning User's Guide
  - SMMUMAN User's Guide
  - System Analysis Toolkit (SAT) User's Guide
  - Technotes
  - User's Guide
    The QNX OS User's Guide is intended for all users of a QNX OS system, from system administrators to end users.
- Graphics
- Programming
- System Security Guide
  The QNX System Security Guide is intended for both system integrators who are responsible for the security of a QNX OS system and developers who want to create a QNX OS resource manager free from vulnerabilities.
- Utilities & Libraries
- Migrating to QNX OS 8.0
QNX Software in the Cloud
QNX Software in the Cloud enables developers to use the QNX OS in the Amazon cloud environment.
QNX Toolkit for Visual Studio Code
This User's Guide describes the QNX^® Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. The guide introduces you to the QNX Toolkit by explaining the QNX development environment and how to build, run, and debug your QNX^® Operating System (OS) applications and systems.
QNX Hypervisor User's Guide
This User's Guide explains the QNX hypervisor architecture and provides instructions for installing and running a QNX Hypervisor system, changing system components and configuration, and using hypervisor features such as virtual devices (vdevs).
Typographical Conventions, Support, and Licensing
This section describes the typographical conventions used throughout the documentation, explains how to obtain technical support, and provides some information about licensing.

Deciding what goes on the target

QNX SDP8.0Building Embedded SystemsConfigurationDeveloper

Depending on your system requirements, you will need to transfer different combinations of the IPL, OS image and filesystems to your target.

These combinations may include:

the IPL
the boot image
the boot image and flash filesystem
the boot image and other image filesystem
some other combination of the above

Figure showing configuration options for embedded systems — Figure 1Different image combinations that can be transfered to the target system.

If your target board supports flash devices, you may wish to write the boot image and the flash filesystem (or the two combined) to the flash devices on the target. This is required if you want to boot from flash, of course. To combine filesystem images, you can use the diskimage utility (see Combining multiple image files).

Note:

During the initial development stages, you'll probably need to write the image into flash using a programmer or a download utility. Later on, when you have a flash filesystem running on your target, you will be able write the image file into a raw flash partition.

If your programmer requires the image file to be in some format other than binary, you can use the mkrec utility to convert the image file format to Motorola S records or Intel hex records (see mkref in the Utilities Reference).

Page updated: March 05, 2025