Howto create a custom xunit device runner?

I'm currently investigation the best approach to solve a problem I'm facing. This is just an idea, I want to get a clear view on the feasibility and required effort.

The company has developed hardware which can execute code. It al started with electrical devices and we migrated slowly towards processors that can execute code. I just mention this so you have an understanding why we ended up where we are. It was not a straight forward path.

So we have those devices - lets call them processors - who are able to run code on top of their custom native operating system. We can write C# code, but can't use the entire framework. In additional there are classes available that can only run on our processors, not on Windows. It 's similar to having Mono on Linux, but not completely. Lets call our framework SIMPL.

When it comes to unit testing, this infrastructure causes some real challenges. I can't test my code on my development machine since .NET on windows can't execute the SIMPL code. It can only compile the code, using a custom compiler which generates not .dll's but a custom library for our processors.

I also can't run unit test on our processors since there is no testing framework for it (yet). So I decided to develop one.

Of course, I don't like to reinvent the weel all over again. So I'm investigation some options. This is completely new to me, I 'm used of using testing tools, but actually has never written anything for it, not even a custom attribute. So this really is a jump into the deep. I thought it would be possible to write some custom "executor" that runs on our processors, which can be called from existing frameworks.

I guess this is what xUnit for devices does. Of course, we don't have a supported device. But it would just be a matter of writing a custom runner for it - like they already exist for iOs, Android, Windows Phone - to make it a supported device. Right?

Has anyone experience with this? Can somebody put me on the right track?

Oh right, just to make the challenge bigger, some additional limitations:

• SIMPL is based on .NET Compact framework 3.5
• The latest EDI supported by our custom compiler is VS2008.