Abstract: Components can be identified from various abstraction levels and can be of different granularities. The components for system software have special challenges for description purpose due to their inherent non-functional attributes and special attributes related to the peculiar role of an operating system. They often exhibit different forms during different phases of the development process of an embedded operating system. An extensible component description language named “XCODE was presented here. As a XML-based language, XCODE can be envisioned various usage scenarios. It provides an extensible, tool independent, royalty-free approach to describe various aspects of components during Compile-Time, Link-Time and Run-Time.

Key words: software component, operating system, component description language, component repository

摘要： 给出了一种称为XCODE的构件描述语言。作为一种基于XML的语言，XCODE可以被用于不同目的场合。它提供了一种可扩展的、独立于工具的方法，可服务于描述编译、链接、运行时刻构件的不同侧面。

关键词: 软件构件, 操作系统, 构件描述语言, 嵌入式系统