[Tinyos-help] TinyOS on MacOSX (Intel)

[Robert Taylor]

Hi,

The suggested fix did work. I can successfully compile and install
telosb/tmote binaries on my Tmote Sky modules.

Although, I failed to get the Java tools working. The javax.comm
installer linked on the http://www.allthingsalceste.com/... website
does install properly on my PPC PowerBook, however, as the website
advises that the JNI classes shouldn't be compiled SF fails as it
can't find the JNI libraries (getenv JNI library not found. Env.getenv
will not work). Uncommenting JNI in the makefile throws a lot of
syntax errors. I still need to investigate whether the fix suggested
in Env.INSTALL ("...copy libgetenv.so to an appropriate place for your
Java VM...") works as the Java file structure on in Mac OS X is
different to Linux/Windows and I'm not sure whether the fix would work
in any case because Mac's use .dylibs rather than .sos. Another point
is that there isn't any readily available Intel compatible javax.comm
libraries. The javax.comm library linked is PPC only and TOScomm and
rxtx fail miserably on both PPC and Intel Macs.

Regards,
Robert

On 5/3/06, Matt Welsh <mdw at eecs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I have searched the archives and have not found much information
> about running TinyOS on MacOS machines (Intel in my case).
> There is some information here:
>         http://www.allthingsalceste.com/tinyos-on-mac-os-x/
>
> However, there are a few details missing on this page, such as how
> to get any of the Java tools to compile, how to receive packets over
> the serial port, etc.
>
> Wondering if anyone else who has dealt with MacOS can help out.
> I swear I have seen MacOS machines with motes plugged into them!
>
> 1) NesC does not seem to work; I simply get
>
> make: *** [exe0] Error 1
>
> This seems to be the same problem reported here:
>
> http://mail.millennium.berkeley.edu/pipermail/tinyos-help/2006-May/016321.html
>
> I have not tried the fix suggested in the followup.
>
> 2) I am unable to compile the Java tools in net/tinyos because (you
> guessed it!) there is no javax.comm for MacOS. Took a look at RXTX but
> am unable to get RXTX-2.0 to compile; seems that RXTX-2.0 is a bit out
> of date. RXTX-2.1 might work but uses the gnu.io namespace so is probably
> not compatible with the TinyOS tools.
>
> 3) The C-based Serial Forwarder in tools/src/sf compiles and seems to
> find the serial port; but subtle differences in the way the serial IO
> works on MacOS seem to be getting in the way of it working properly.
>
> In general it is frustrating that the TinyOS toolset depends so heavily
> on these large, unwieldy, and non-portable Java libraries. I am not sure
> what the TinyOS 2.x effort is doing but it would be far preferable to
> have a lean 'serial daemon' that interfaces to the serial port and could
> be (ideally) readily ported across many platforms; then the Java tools
> only need to understand how to talk to the daemon over a socket.
>
> Matt
>
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