[ECOS] Re: Three questions-ecosSW and ecos on production system

[Bart Veer <bartv at cygnus dot co dot uk>]

>>>>> "Chan" == Chan Shih-Ping Richard <cshihpin@dso.org.sg> writes:

    Chan> Three questions:
    Chan> 1) Is there a CVS repository for ecosSWtools (the
    Chan> cross-compilers for arm, sparclite et al). Are the tweaks
    Chan> going to be merged into the main trees? E.g., I don't see
    Chan> sparclite-elf in the gcc-2.95.2 tree.

No, we want to move away from having an eCos set of tools. Instead the
plan is that people should be able to use the standard net releases of
gcc etc. to build eCos. I believe we are pretty much there for gcc and
gdb, for most targets anyway, but there has not been a major release
of binutils for some time and eCos relies on some linker functionality
that did not exist at the time of that release.

Looking at the gcc ChangeLog,
http://gcc.gnu.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/egcs/gcc/ChangeLog, I can see
the following entry for the sparclite-elf support:

Revision 1.4076, Sat Aug 7 07:58:05 1999 UTC (5 months, 1 week ago) by law 

        * config/sparc/liteelf.h: New file to support sparclite-elf target
        * config/sparc/t-sp86x: New file to support sparc86x targets
        * config/sparc/sp86x-aout.h: New file to support sparc86x-aout target
        * config/sparc/sp86x-elf.h: New file to support sparc86x-elf target
        * configure.in: Support above target triplets
        * configure: Regenerated

gcc 2.95.2 was released on October 27th. It is quite likely that the
sparclite changes did not make it into that release, not least because
2.95.2 was intended to be a bug-fix release rather than add new
functionality. Recent gcc snapshots and the anonymous CVS gcc sources
should have all the sparclite-elf support.

    Chan> 2) I've glanced through the tutorial and eCos documentation
    Chan> but can't seem to find an answer to the following - how do
    Chan> you target your production system rather than an eval board-
    Chan> it may be a system with no cygmon or ROM monitor. Is the
    Chan> application binary (say burnt into EEPROM on production
    Chan> system) runnable without the cygmon stuff etc.

    Chan> Must one write a HAL for the production system?

Generally, yes. A typical eCos configuration involves two HAL
packages, an architectural HAL and a platform HAL. If you want to run
eCos on a new board then you will need to provide a new platform HAL,
typically by copying an existing one. See
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/faq.html#porting_board

For a production system, you will want a ROM startup configuration.
This is largely a platform HAL issue. Most of the existing platform
HALs already provide a ROM startup option, so you can build ROMable
applications for those boards.

    Chan> 3) Is there an eCos porting guide?

HAL documentation is available in the eCos reference manual,
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/docs-1.2.1/ref/ecos-ref/the-ecos-hardware-abstraction-layer-hal.html
This includes some porting notes.

Bart Veer // eCos net maintainer