JETRT is a framework of real-time software and simulation tools designed to help development of control systems in the JET fusion experiment environment. The main design choice is the complete separation of the target application from the hardware and plant interfaces. This architecture has been designed to maximize the reusability and to standardize the software development cycle of real-time control systems. Thanks to this design choice development costs have been reduced and even non-specialist programmers can easily contribute to a real-time project. JETRT also provides a set of powerful debugging and testing tools, some of them well integrated with the Matlab environment. This feature allows to reduce signiflcantly the time spent on the plant for the commissioning of a new control system. Copyright c ∞2005 IFAC