[Tinyos-help] .platform question

[David Gay]

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