[Tinyos-devel] Re: [Tinyos-help] .platform question

[David Gay]

On Dec 17, 2007 3:16 PM, John Griessen <john at ecosensory.com> wrote:
> David Gay wrote:
> > On Dec 17, 2007 2:16 PM, John Griessen <john at ecosensory.com> wrote:
> >> What makes the .platform file necessary separately from the ecosens1.target
> >> file?  Could the ecosens1.target do it all somehow?
> >
> > The .platform file is for ncc (and mig and ncg). The .target file is
> > something used by the Makefile-based build system for TinyOS, and
> > contains things unrelated to what ncc needs/wants (e.g. information on
> > how to reprogram motes). Ideally at least there should be no
> > duplication between the information in a .target and .platform file...
> >
> > Merging the two files is, to me at least, a bad idea:
> > - If all the .platform stuff moves into .target: you can't build
> > anything without using the "magic" build system. This would be like if
> > gcc wasn't usable without some magic very large Makefile.
> > - If all the .target stuff moved into .platform: this would hardwire
> > specific programmers, preferred compilation flags, etc into ncc.
> >
> > David Gay
>
> Thanks,
>
> I'm a SW devel newbie really. first used a compiler with any
> detailed input 2 years ago.  Assembler before that.
>
> Is there a way to put both files in the same dir?
>
> I've just told wher to find .target by an include, so that can
> be anywhere, right?  I'm thinking of putting it in my platform dir along with .platform
> and documenting that method for my biologist/farmer customers.  It's delayed me for days now
> just learning about it.

Hmm, not sure where the .target files can be - I'm not a big expert on
the magic build stuff. A quick perusal of Makerules suggests there's a
TOSMAKE_PATH variable, but... Anybody else know?

David, not really in the mood for deep investigations of support/make ;-)