[Tinyos-devel] building the msp430 compiler and libc

[Jan Beutel]

maybe moving to gcc 4.x is a bit steep now but imho moving to a newer
libc would make a lot of sense (and it doesn't work with the current
gcc). i will try to get hold of chris liechti (the msp-gcc maintainer -
he works at siemens around the corner and we have a joint project...)
and see what he has to say about tool/libc versions. and certainly i
would like to get johns view on this.

after all it is certainly not an immediate action item....

jan


On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 23:05 +0200, Vlado Handziski wrote:
> The recommended versions of the msp430 tools (gcc 3.2.3 and gdb
> 5.1.1.) should compile cleanly with gcc 3.4 that (although not as
> default) is still available as package on most of the current distros.
> Looking at the discussions on the mspgcc mailing list, fixing the
> gcc-4.x compile problems are not so high on the agenda. This
> especially goes for the gdb that requires more work. 
> 
> The best thing that we can do is to periodically refresh the RPMs to
> include the latest patches. But the majority of the fixes during the
> last year were not directly related to the particular MCU models
> currently used on the tinyos platforms (apart from several small fixes
> in the libc header files), or to the 2-3 bugs that we have hit in
> tinyos code (like the HW multiplication bug, the 32x32 bug, etc),  so
> no one  had a strong incentive to do it (together with the testing,
> etc. that is the actual hard part). 
> 
> Vlado
> 
> On 6/21/07, Jan Beutel <j.beutel at ieee.org> wrote:
>         hello all,
>         
>         i noticed that when building gcc-3.2.3 and msp430-libc from
>         scratch on a
>         "current" linux system (in my case this is gentoo linux) there
>         are a
>         number of problems:
>         
>         - gcc-3.2.3 does not build on gcc-4.x (only on gcc-3.x) (for
>         an msp430
>         target).
>         
>         - msp430-libc does not build (neither the CVS tag that is
>         contained in
>         the current rpms nor the current CVS head) without minor
>         patching.
>         
>         - the rest of the toolchain (avr related stuff, nescc and 
>         msp-430-binutils compile ok on both debian and gentoo.
>         
>         
>         so my question was if we want to stay with these rather old
>         compiler
>         versions forever or update at some point? both avr and msp
>         toolchains
>         have advanced significantly over the last years. i could
>         imagine that 
>         especially john regehr's endeavor for an improved toolchain
>         and also the
>         xubuntos reference install could benefit from "more modern"
>         and cleaner
>         tools (without patches)
>         
>         i can only comment on the avr side of things since i only have
>         limited 
>         experience with msp. but migrating to a newer libc and usually
>         also to a
>         newer gcc is pretty painless for the large amount of the
>         codebase. of
>         course there is a catch here and there but most of it is just
>         changed 
>         locations of some libc includes.... (i draw this experience
>         from
>         maintaining and overseeing the btnode project sw and tools)
>         
>         but of course changes to the tools should not be done on a
>         regular
>         basis.
>         
>         jan
>         
>         
>         
>         --
>         Dr. Jan Beutel                              j.beutel at ieee.org
>         Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETZ G75
>         ETH Zurich                             +41 44 632 70 32 Phone 
>         Gloriastrasse 35                         +41 44 632 10 35 Fax
>         CH 8092 Zurich/Switzerland  http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/~beutel
>         
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>         
> 
-- 
Dr. Jan Beutel                              j.beutel at ieee.org
Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETZ G75
ETH Zurich                             +41 44 632 70 32 Phone
Gloriastrasse 35                         +41 44 632 10 35 Fax
CH 8092 Zurich/Switzerland  http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/~beutel