Re: [ECOS] eCosCentric Cortex-M port contribution

[Simon Kallweit <simon dot kallweit at intefo dot ch>]

Nick Garnett schrieb:
> As some of you may know, eCosCentric have been working on a Cortex-M
> port for eCos for a while. This has now reached a reasonably stable
> state and is currently running through tests in our test farm.
>   

Can the test results be browsed by normal people, or is this still 
exclusive to ecos maintainers?

> We have decided to contribute the basic packages to anoncvs.  This
> will provide a working Cortex-M base on which the community can
> further develop their own custom hardware ports.
>   

Sounds great!

> The packages I intend to contribute are as follows:
>
> Architecture HAL
> STM32 Variant HAL
> STM3210E-EVAL Platform HAL
> USART serial driver
> On-Chip FLASH driver (V2 flash interface)
>   

Are there plans to merge the flash V2 support into the trunk anytime 
soon? Or is this scheduled for the ecos 3 release?

> In addition there are a number of toolchain issues that need to be
> addressed. I discovered a potential problem the M3 implementation
> which needs a compiler modification (ARM are currently still
> evaluating the issue). GDB has some problems correctly supporting the
> different layout of the CPSR register in the M processors. There are
> also some GCC multilib issues that need sorting out.
>
> The result of this is that we will release a specially patched version
> of the ARM toolchain to go with the contribution.
>   

Could you give us some more information about the issues? Also, are 
there plans to get the patches into the mainline GCC?

> All of this is in hand but not quite yet ready for contribution: the
> toolchain work needs completing, and we want to get a few runs in on
> the test farm to ensure there are no obvious problems before
> contributing.
>
> I expect this to take a couple of weeks more.
>   

Now, that puts me in quite an akward situation, as I've been working on 
a community cortex-m3 port for almost a month now. I wonder if it is 
best to stop my efforts and wait for your contribution. As we just got 
the first prototypes of our new STM32 based design a few days ago, we 
really look forward to get ecos working on the boards, so I cannot 
really just sit here and wait for your release. Is there a possibility 
to get the current snapshot upfront so I can continue with development 
based on your port, and see if there is anything worth to be contributed 
from the community port? I'd rather put further efforts into your port, 
if it is the better base for the future.

Best regards,
Simon

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