[En-Nut-Discussion] Extending printf for handling 64 bit values

[Harald Kipp]

Hi list,

I'm sure, that many developers wants to have this and it's great that
Uwe implemented it and tested it on the Cortex.

But there's a big problem with the current implementation.

This simple program

#include <dev/board.h>
#include <dev/debug.h>
#include <sys/heap.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    NutRegisterDevice(&devDebug0, 0, 0);
    freopen("uart0", "w", stdout);
    printf("%d bytes free\n", NutHeapAvailable());
    for (;;);
}

creates an AVR 8-bit binary of 6804 bytes and consumes 2020 bytes of
RAM. That's already an awful lot.

When adding Uwe's 64-bit patch, the binary grows by another 748 bytes
and consumes an additional 36 bytes of RAM. Even if you don't need
64-bit values. I think this is too costly.

When adding a new function, which consumes significantly more resources
without actually using it, user should have to ability to disable this
new feature via the Configurator.

Regards,

Harald