Paul,
a few comments from somebody who is not a compiler developer, but who
very recently started to get fpc running for another embedded platform,
the avr.
1) you write somewhere that you ported things from c, and your examples
start as
"function main: integer ..."
which looks to me exactly like int main().
In pascal, there is no need to declare a "function main". it is
created automatically by the runtime system and contains the begin ..
end block of your pascal program. In an embedded environment it is
called immediately after some essential initialization (stack pointer,
zeroing menory etc.), and if it returns, control goes to a system halt
procedure.
2) if you build your crosscompiler with the command
make clean all OS_TARGET=embedded CPU_TARGET=my_cpu
make will not only build you a compiler but also a basic rtl (without,
for example, file handling, as that needs an underlaying operating
system), but which includes things like simple string handling. What
this system includes and what not is controlled by the file
<fpcbase>/rtl/embedded/rtl.cfg. For the beginning leave the default,
minimal settings.
3) avoid ansistrings. They need heap management which is probably not
available in the basic system, and consume much more resources than
short strings.
4) how good (in the sense of efficient, short and fast execution code)
or bad the rtl thus constructed is depends on how much work has already
gone into porting fpc to the cpu / system combination you use. The rtl
building process is using a clever sequence of conditional compiles to
check if a certain function has already been implemented cpu and/or
opsys specific, and if that is not the case, falls back to a generic
procedure written in pascal that does the job, however not always in the
most elegant way. The good part is, that from the beginning you will
have a rtl that works.
5) unlike C, the fpc compiler depends on the existence of at least a
minimal rtl (unit system), even if you don't call library functions
explicitely. There are actually a lot of routines in system.pp and it's
include files that are declared with the qualifier "compilerproc" which
makes them invisible for the application program. Calls to these
functions, however, appear, inserted directly by the compiler
6) there is no need to mess around with linker scripts etc. As long as
you stay inside the "pascal world", i.e. write your application as a
pascal program that can (or not) use several units, and do any necessary
assembler programming using fpc's inline assembler, fpc will take care
of the linking process. Either completely behind the scene, or, if you
define so, by creating a linker script you can use. And even if you use
external references (third party libraries, for example), if they are
referenced by correctly declared pascal external functions, this should
work.
7) the rtl unit system will be (smart-)linked automatically to your
program, every other rtl unit has to be requested explicitely by a uses
clause if their functionality is needed.
8) does your program have a "program", i.e. a main file that adheres to
the syntax
program myprog
....declarations...
begin
....statements....
end.
I have only seen a "unit main", which for the fpc system is nothing more
than one of probably many units, but which does not tell the compiler to
link to the rtl (to be precise, to the unit system). The "program" does
exactly that.
your examples look to me as if you are following your C habits, just
writing in pascal. If that's correct - don't do it. Most likely, the
problems you are encountering will dissapear as soon as you just let fpc
and the basic rtl do their jobs. Do the following:
- build a compiler and rtl using OS_TARGET=embedded and CPU_TARGET
whatever is closest to your actual cpu, which seems to be some arm variety.
- write your "main" as the begin .. end block of a program
- let fpc take care of the linking.
I hope what I wrote helps a little and does not bore too much,
Georg
Am 16.04.2015 um 15:29 schrieb Jeppe Johansen:
On 04/16/2015 12:49 PM, Paul Michell wrote:
I assume this is because string handling support is not included in the
embedded RTL generated with the compiler, or that I am not linking
the right
object files if I need to do this by hand? What would be the best
way to
enable string handling? Even short string handling would make FPC far
more
preferable to C for me for embedded work.
You would make it a whole lot easier for yourself if you just used the
Embedded target and added an actual controller type for that specific
microcontroller. Then you wouldn't need to play around with linker
scripts and manually including and trimming RTL files.
Adding the controller type is about 5-10 lines of code. Then the RTL
unit can be a stub for now which basically just initializes .data and
.bss.
If you have the name of the controller I can add it?
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