Re: embedded newbies site.

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

On 07/15/2013 10:18:20 PM, Strake wrote:
> On 15/07/2013, Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> >    - creating a development environment (building binutils, gcc,
> > make...)
> >      - requirements for self-hosting
> >      - requirements for natively building Linux From Scratch
> >      - cross vs native compiling
> >        - bootstrapping to native compiling under emulation.
> 
> This. For me, at least, this is often the greatest hindrance.

It's a fairly hard part. My whole aboriginal linux project was an  
investigation of what's actually involved here and how to do it. Now  
that the investigation's complete (or at least reached a reasonable "it  
works now, and I can't think of an obviously better wya to do it with  
the tools at hand" stopping point), I suspect there's a better way of  
explaining it than just "go read this giant pile of shell scripts that  
I got to work".

So I should write up what's involved, and how I determined the  
requirements...

> > - efficient (elegant) programming
> >    - Why C and scritpting languages, why NOT C++ and autoconf
> >    - tradeoffs
> >      - code reuse
> >      - transaction granularity
> >      - taking advantage of SMP without going crazy
> 
> I would be glad to help here.

What did you have in mind?

> May find some ideas here:
> http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/

I read the original "cat -v considered harmful" which is why I did  
"catv" in busybox many years ago, but that was a paper by one of the  
original bell labs guys. This guy is just collecting random papers.

While I admire the attitude, I've never found that site particularly  
useful. There's no pragmatism at all in his approach, he doesn't  
recommend things you can actually _use_, just platitudes. He recommends  
tcc instead of gcc, which doesn't build even 1% as many real world  
software packages. (I joined the tcc mailing list right after tccboot  
hit slashdot circa 2004, and I spent 3 years maintaining a tcc fork  
after Fabrice moved on to QEMU. I know exactly why it's NOT a real  
world replacement for gcc right now, what would be required to get  
minimal functionality out of it, and why the current development team  
will never do so.) Similarly he recommends uclibc and dietlibc instead  
of glibc with no discussion of the tradeoffs... musl exists because  
they're not good enough.

What I'm hoping out of the new embedded newbies stuff is things people  
can actually do/use. Even the theory should lead to practical advice,  
immediately applicable. (It just explains _why_ you want to do it that  
way, and what happens if you don't.)

Rob