Re: [ECOS] How do you like eCos

[Grant Edwards <grante at visi dot com>]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 02:58:57PM -0500, Lewin A.R.W. Edwards wrote:

> > > and what is your target CPU/architecture?
> >
> >ARM7TDMI (custom board using a Samsung KS32C5000).
> 
> My intended target is very similar - Cirrus Logic EP7212
> (Maverick, hence my pun). How did you manage to build gcc for
> thumb? I gave up on this task.

I'm running in 32-bit ARM mode.  I've never done anything in
thumb mode.

> Well, I was thinking more about the toolchain than the OS
> itself when I wrote that. I went through perhaps 80-100 full
> builds of binutils, gcc and insight before finally concluding
> that (a) the instructions for arm-thumb on Red Hat's site are
> just wrong, and (b) the arm-thumb target seems to be broken in
> all current and all past versions of gcc. [...]

Ah, I forgot that you were using thumb mode.  That probably
explains the differences in our experiences.  There are a lot
more people using 32-bit ARM mode (people running Linux on
StrongARM, for example), so I think that tends to be better
supported than the thumb stuff.  How well the open source model
works tends to depend a lot on how large the user community is.

"All bugs are deep to a small number of eyes."

> > > and every time one hits a problem one has to start debugging it
> > > from the ground up.
> >
> >Are you saying that you would prefer that official releases
> >came out more often?
> 
> Well, that would be nice :) But realistically, I am asking for
> publication somewhere of a complete working set of tools and a
> set of OS sources that can be built with those tools, even if
> the whole package is rather elderly. With that to start from,
> at least one can (for example) debug one's circuit while
> cautiously trying to build and use more recent versions of
> tools and OS sources. It's very frustrating to be where I am
> now, where nothing builds quite the way it's supposed to and I
> can't trust any component.

You might be able to purchase a gnu-pro version from Red Hat,
but if you're looking for something you can download for free,
that pretty much depends on whether somebody else who has
needed the same stuff has taken the time to make it all
available.  I put together a working snapshot of
Cygwin/32-bit-ARM-tools (which is available via FTP thanks to
Dave Airlie), but I don't have any thumb mode tools.

> I don't know about you, but we have standardized on OrCAD for
> our schematic capture and PCB layout, mainly because our
> factories use it. It's just so handy to be able to Alt-Tab away
> from the source window to the schematic, and to develop circuit
> and software simultaneously.

Well, I don't do hardware design any more.  The last time I
did, we were using Electrical CAD software than ran on Sun
Workstations.  Since it was all X11 based, I could run the
programs remotely from my Linux box (as could Win32 users after
they futzed with Hummingbird Exceed for a day or two).

> Additionally, with our current DOS/Win9x development system
> (actually it's an ancient version of gcc, compiled for a Win32
> host), I can carry all the source and schematics on my laptop,
> so when I go home I have access to it and can answer midnight
> questions from our Oriental factory, build emergency test
> versions of software to deal with production issues, etc.

I can do the same with my Laptop that runs Linux, except that I
can't actually edit the schematics, only look at them.

> >I don't buy DOS-only hardware.  Except for that one HC11
> 
> We have no choice, dealing with Taiwanese chip vendors. The
> chips are cheap and often work, but the development systems are
> unbelievably bad. I am trying to wean us off them, but we still
> have a lot of hardware round the place that uses proprietary
> parallel port controls.

Yea, that sucks.  Development tools that come from IC vendors
are notoriously bad, but sometimes they're the only choice.
JTAG debugging w/ the ARM isn't the greatest, and I miss having
real ICE, but it works and it's fairly platform independent.

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com