Hi, er, Richard - apparently we have an uncommon name, so it's doubly weird to be writing to my namesake!
I completely agree that the methodology (such as it is) used in Open Source projects leaves a lot to be desired; but it seems to me that despite many imperfections the Open Source movement is producing some remarkably useful stuff which is incredibly enabling and exciting, in a nerdy sort of way. The fact that one's code is released into the wild and subject to critical peer review is an incredible concentrator, and software types being what they are tend to find they cannot just leave something alone knowing that there are rough edges that can be shaved off. It seems to me that the most productive way ahead is to play to our strengths whilst being mindful of our weaknesses. This is all very well, but what does this mean in practice, to us? I have a project (Z180-based) which is to furnish an access control system for a local Buddhist Centre, bizarrely. I'm not doing this for any other reasons except that I have the know-how and gear to do it, it will help my friends and it interests me. To make this happen, I'm going to develop some code, in C (assembler being too clunky for my taste, although I understand it well enough). Because I'm a devout Linux user, using SDCC is a natural choice and will give me a great deal of practical experience, at least with the Z80 fork. I'll keep a diary and from time-to-time I'll post an account of what I've been doing, and hopefully this will give you a punt in the right direction with a manual revamp. In the short-term, I suggest you write a noddy program and see what happens - I'll post mine shortly if it helps get you going (and I'll have to tidy it up as well!)? I have an interest in the various PIC forks too, but I do not propose to devote any time to these just yet, useful as the PIC series are. I have some existing code written for a 16F84A [?], I wonder... I do think that there's a fairly fundamental problem with SDCC under Windows, and that is that the Windows build is something of a grudging concession. Everything about SDCC, as far as I can see, is geared towards Unix/Linux where C and the development of C programs is completely natural, and a native C compiler is standard. Any kind of development environment is an add-on for Windows with varying degrees of discomfort to go with it. Microsoft is notoriously unhelpful in disclosing the internals of Windows, and this has made it difficult for anyone to develop anything for it, and much is owed to reverse-engineering, which is no way to run a railroad really. I daresay that some poor bugger had to fork-out for the C compiler with which the SDCC cross-compilers, assemblers, linkers and so-on were built with originally, under Windows. If you have a spare partition on one of your Windows machines, then you could install a Linux distribution on it and have a dual-boot setup (I have a laptop configured this way - you need about 7GB free). I have another solution you might like to consider, but please contact me off-list about it... ooer. ;-) On Friday 29 August 2008 00:16:03 Richard Erlacher wrote: > Richard, > > That's all very true. > <snip> -- Richard. PGP Key-id: 0x5AB3D350 For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Sdcc-user mailing list Sdcc-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sdcc-user
