Shaun,
Thanks a lot for your quick answer.
I must admit I didn't look good enough at the voxware site to figure out
that the tar files are still there, even though the install directory
pointed to by the gnuwince.html page is missing.
A quick resume of what I found and experienced this far :
- I started using Shauns stuff from the debian ftp server a while ago
(I'm not using Debian so I recompiled it.)
- Even though Shaun says this cannot be used to build apps that provide
a windows user interface, I've been able to do so (but not every
windowing API appears to work).
- To do that, I've implemented some workarounds that I'd like to get rid
of. Also maybe some of the limitations can be lifted by further work.
I was thinking about doing that, but am inclined to start off with a
more up to date source distribution, to at least have a chance on the
GCC/binutils folks pick up the patches.
By the way I have a standard PocketPC (a Mio 168) and a PC with
Mandriva, and I'd like to develop GUI apps for the PocketPC. As an
experiment I'm porting Xinvest (http://xinvest.sunsite.dk).
What I am missing :
- Documentation so I know what I'm doing (to be honest, I've been doing
some trial and error, there has to be a better way).
I'd like to find out more about the processor (how do you program
it in assembler, what's the ABI, ..). Also I don't have much info
on how WinCE really works on this hardware.
- Explanation about the limitations I'm experiencing. I realise that
the answer I may get is "we don't know".
- A bit of help in getting the new software releases operational, but
maybe the first thing to do there is figure out which part is broken.
(Shaun suggests it is gas, but I've blindly upgraded all three
softwares - gcc, binutils, newlib - so the first thing I should do is
assess which one is causing the problem.)
- For this last bit : should I theoretically be able to pick up the
wince stuff from either Shaun's debian distribution or the voxware
stuff, or are there more up to date versions of that ?
Suggestions ?
Danny
On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 12:56 -0700, Shaun Jackman wrote:
> Hello Danny,
>
> gas (binutils) > 2.13.2.1 has a known issue assembling DLLs for wince.
> They assemble without errors but won't run. I should say the existance
> of an issue is known, but the nature of the issue is a bit of a
> mystery.
>
> The last version of the rest of binutils (not gas) I tried was 2.15.
> There's no reason updating to a recent version shouldn't work, but I
> haven't tried it. The last version of GCC I tried was 3.4.2. The same
> goes for it.
>
> The upstream newlib sources do not contain newlib/libc/sys/wince,
> which is only available as a patch either from me (through Debian in
> the package pocketpc-gcc) or from Craig Vanderborgh (through Voxware
> in the package GNUWINCE).
>
> I haven't worked on the Pocket PC (WinCE) platform in some time, but
> Craig actively works on it, and Eric House will hopefully be taking
> over the Debian package from me.
>
> Cheers,
> Shaun
>
> On 3/31/06, Danny Backx <danny.backx@scarlet.be> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've been playing with Shaun's work on the gcc/newlib/binutils combo to
> > cross-compile stuff for my PocketPC.
> >
> > That worked rather well, but I wanted to move on to newer tools before
> > putting much effort in improving the current stuff.
> >
> > So I "upgraded" to gcc 4.1, newlib 1.14, and binutils 2.16 .
> >
> > And now I can't recompile and run even the most simple program.
> >
> > Are there obvious pitfalls or should it "just work" ?
> >
> > Danny
>