[En-Nut-Discussion] Supporting Other Target Platforms

[Harald Kipp]

Hi Kolja,

At 09:10 02.02.2004 +0100, Waschk,Kolja wrote:
> > wich compilers I should
> > chose in the first place for ARM7TDMI, H8/300 or Coldfire. [...]
> > Can anybody recommend any pre-build binaries for Win32?
>
>http://www.OCDemon.com has GNU gcc 2.95.3+binutils+gdb/insight for ARM.

Isn't 2.95 a little bit outdated?



>Looking at ARM targets, I'd suggest to select a particular configuration
>and document this selection for first steps. There are so many options, e.g.
>little vs big endian memory, presence of MMU, FPU, ... Many of these options
>have to be taken into account when configuring and building the toolchain.
>For example, a lot of toolchains have a libc with floating point instructions
>that wouldn't even disappear if you give the proper "no-fpu" compile options.

That's also my experience with arm-gcc. And I think it
is neccessary to have something pre-configured for
Windows, if this exists.

On Linux a well documented build process is sufficient.
No idea, how's the situation with OS/X, but I guess it's
similar to Linux up to a certain extend.

Being forced to install the full Cygwin development
toolchain and watching tons of warnings while the
cross compiler is build, wouldn't attract many
potential users.



>A reasonable configuration for an "ARM Ethernut" could be
>
>   - ARM7 core (Architecture v4)
>   - Thumb instructions available
>   - MMU not available
>   - FPU not available
>   - little endian memory (seems to be more common)

We selected the AT91R40008 for the first step. I expected
something other than Atmel again, and other chips are
superior in many aspects (DMA, more IOs). But the 256k
internal RAM is the killer argument.

Harald