From the FAQ, it states that: "The idle task is created at the bottom of the function by a call to xTaskCreate(). Cut this line from Sourcetasks.c and paste it into main(). Rationalise the number of tasks. The idle task is not required if:    1. Your application has a task that never blocks, and …    2. Your application does not make any calls to vTaskDelete()." I would like to suggest that a configCREATE_IDLE_TASK define be added to conditionally compile the code which creates the idle task in the vTaskStartScheduler.  I currently use one copy of FreeRTOS in my source tree for all projects so it would be handy to just set up per-project configurations and not have to modify any of the base FreeRTOS code. Thanks for all your great work!