I spent the last couple hours working on integrating newlib and FreeRTOS. I ultimately found the post below that really helped me. I wanted to share this with everyone here so if someone is trying to do the same thing, they could find the answer faster.

http://sourceware.org/ml/newlib/2008/msg00384.html

Richard - does something like this make sense to add to the FreeRTOS codebase?

Thanks for the link - that's a much nicer and more portable solution than others I have seen whereby the structure is stored on the stack.

I have avoided adding in support directly up until now as there are not that many deeply embedded apps that need it, and it is 'yet another option' (originally the intent in FreeRTOS was to avoid these compile time options, didn't quite work out that way :o). However implementing it in this way has very little impact so it would seem appropriate now as FreeRTOS gets used in much bigger systems.

I'm not sure about testing though. Which tool chain and microcontroller are you using? Could you send me your code (to r dot barry (at) freertos.org)?

Regards.