Interactive-C on the Prop?

RobotWorkshop

Has anyone here looked into possibly supporting Interactive-C on the Propeller chip? It has already been ported to a few other platforms and would be a nice thing to see on the Propeller. Seems like the built-in commands to start another process might work for starting one in a separate cog. I've used IC with a couple projects and it's pretty nice. Looks like it might be a good fit for the Propeller. In case you want a little more detail on IC just checkout the link below:

handyboard.com/software/icsource.html

Any thoughts?

Robert

hippy

I looked at it and discounted it, but I'm not familiar with Interactve C nor using it.

The ideal situation for anyone writing a VM or bytecode / P-Code interpreter is to have a ready built compiler which runs under MS-DOS/Windows and generates a bytecode image in an output file plus a comprehensive document describing the bytecode itself. Otherwise there's a lot of work which needs to be done beyond simply writing the VM.

LCC is well documented in the book "A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation" ( by Hanson and Fraser ) and elsewhere. That can generate bytecode ( unfortunately not optimised ) and is a far better candidate for a VM creation. By modifying the compiler source it would be possible to create a compiler to native Propeller Cog instructions.

I found a compiler executable which can generate bytecode and was looking into converting the textual bytecode output into a format which could be loaded into a Spin/PASM program, and writing a VM for that. Unfortunately other things keep getting in the way of that.

RobotWorkshop

I think it might be worth a second look. At the moment it runs on several older 68HC11 boards (HandyBoard, Rug Warrior, and Sumo11) and has also be ported over to the Gameboy and LEGO RCX brick. One neat feature is that you can go ahead and compile/download your code and also work with it interactively. I've been using it on some projects and thought it could work well on the Propeller too. I still need to go through the docs to see how it might be ported to the Prop and just wanted to see if perhaps anyone here had already started working on a similar project.

hippy

Not having any Interactive C tools nor any 68HC11 or other usable hardware is really the limitation for me, but others may be able to step up to the challenge. Unfortunately the silence seems to suggest there's no one here so far who could help out.