On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 06:53:30PM +0000, g...@novadsp.com wrote: > Hello Martin > > Re your first question if you are looking to use uCLinux then pick a > suitable processor. Unless the hardware budget is very, very, very tight > you will save endless amounts of time, energy, thus money using a > processor with suitable hardware resources. You'll get excellent and > free networking, driver stacks, tools, etc etc. There are very low cost > ARM7 solutions.
Certainly a good idea. > I'm a Windows developer who started using uCLinux a few months back. The > project required an embedded server and Windows GUI. The target hardware > was a custom board with specs similar to this: > http://www.gridconnect.com/sk16.html > > Some observations resulting from the experience: > > 1. For application development it was significantly faster to > edit/compile/debug vanilla ISO C++ using Visual Studio 2008(*). > 2. Once I was happy with the code I set up a VS2008 makefile project > that used the CodeSourcery x86 -> 68K C++ cross-compiler. This meant I > could edit and compile/link whilst still using familiar tools like > Visual Assist etc. > 3. I wrote a combined TFTP server and serial-port console app that ran > on Windows which enabled me to download and run the 68K binaries. > 4. Embedded debugging was all done with output to the console. No > hardware debugger available in the budget :( We just use gcc, makefiles, and avoid those awful IDE things that do nothing but frustrate developers. > N.B. I did not have to do anything with uCLinux itself. To compile and > confgure custom varieties I would suggest VMWare/Virtual PC or try the > very cool CoLinux. This runs Linux as a Win32 task from which you can > browse your Windows machine. Not great if you need X etc but fantastic > for console mode/server type stuff. Much lighter weight than VMWare. > > I consider VMWare to be essential if you end up using a desktop Linux. > No one wants to have to use some 5 year old box for dev work, spend the > 150 bucks and get VMWare 7. It will even virtualise your USB2 hardware. My machine is 6 years old and is perfectly fine. It is a terminal for accessing the highend machine that is the build server everyone works on. I don't know why people still think putting compile jobs on workstations makes any sense compared to having one shared machine that gets the job done much faster. Easier to administrate, easier to backup, more efficient use of resources. > I did experiment with various Linux distros including Ubuntu, SUSE and > the RHEL clone but none of them did it for me. Windows 7 looks way too > good, works way too well and already had all my toys loaded up as well. Windows 7 does look pretty. Still too dependant on the mouse though, and not great to navigate with the keyboard. Also really bad at running posix style programs (being that it isn't a posix compliant OS design at all, that is not surprising). > * I did try the Dev++ and Codeblocks environments. I actually did try > quite hard. But despite the admirable amount of effort that has gone > into both they are not a patch in the VS IDE, esp. if you are used to > 3rd party plugins for code refactoring, cross-referencing, source > control etc (SourceGear in my case). Well the problem is in looking for a good IDE. There is no such thing. -- Len Sorensen _______________________________________________ uClinux-dev mailing list uClinux-dev@uclinux.org http://mailman.uclinux.org/mailman/listinfo/uclinux-dev This message was resent by uclinux-dev@uclinux.org To unsubscribe see: http://mailman.uclinux.org/mailman/options/uclinux-dev
