Welcome Alpha Testers
jazzed
Posts: 11,803
To all Alpha testers:
This forum will be supportive of your efforts and will help you get through any problems you may have. You will have full access to the Propeller GCC team here.
Remember the task of Alpha is to find bugs. If we don't find bugs, we're not testing enough.
I'll have updates later for people who prefer using a GUI IDE over command line tools and an editor. This is still work in progress.
Please speak out if you don't understand something in any of our Wiki documents on code.google.com/p/propgcc or other documentation. The documents on google code are technical and do not necessarily represent the end product. Parallax will produce documents that incorporate their own special sauce later.
Please speak out if you don't understand something about the GCC approach.
All questions in this sub-forum asked to further knowledge and contribute to the goals of testing the GCC tool-chain will be treated with respect.
Test Plan:
A big part of our current test plan is for everyone to choose a SPIN demo/object from the OBEX or some project that you have written in SPIN to port it to C/C++. There is a ton of material out there. Please pick something and let us know what your plan is.
Another part of or plan is to verify all of the standard library functions. People are welcome to participate in this specific effort also. Just by porting a project you will likely run into several library functions and that will help greatly. Nothing beats going through items one at a time though. I have a list I'll be posting later.
We will also be interested in going through the PEKit Labs. Any volunteers for this effort are appreciated.
Rewards:
Parallax is prepared to offer rewards commensurate with individual contributions. This is up to Parallax 's discretion.
Thanks from the Propeller GCC Team.
--Steve
This forum will be supportive of your efforts and will help you get through any problems you may have. You will have full access to the Propeller GCC team here.
Remember the task of Alpha is to find bugs. If we don't find bugs, we're not testing enough.
I'll have updates later for people who prefer using a GUI IDE over command line tools and an editor. This is still work in progress.
Please speak out if you don't understand something in any of our Wiki documents on code.google.com/p/propgcc or other documentation. The documents on google code are technical and do not necessarily represent the end product. Parallax will produce documents that incorporate their own special sauce later.
Please speak out if you don't understand something about the GCC approach.
All questions in this sub-forum asked to further knowledge and contribute to the goals of testing the GCC tool-chain will be treated with respect.
Test Plan:
A big part of our current test plan is for everyone to choose a SPIN demo/object from the OBEX or some project that you have written in SPIN to port it to C/C++. There is a ton of material out there. Please pick something and let us know what your plan is.
Another part of or plan is to verify all of the standard library functions. People are welcome to participate in this specific effort also. Just by porting a project you will likely run into several library functions and that will help greatly. Nothing beats going through items one at a time though. I have a list I'll be posting later.
We will also be interested in going through the PEKit Labs. Any volunteers for this effort are appreciated.
Rewards:
Parallax is prepared to offer rewards commensurate with individual contributions. This is up to Parallax 's discretion.
Thanks from the Propeller GCC Team.
--Steve
Comments
I've never used the GCC tool chain and my C is rusty. Would you prefer me waiting until Beta testing so I don't muddy the waters with general ignorance or should I jump in and start drowning?
Thanks!
I fell into a stagnant, algae filled mountain lake when I was a kid. White air-filled water rushed all around me when I fell. After a few moments I saw my father's face. He saved my life. He would have been 82 today. If you try it out and end up feeling helpless, all you have to do is speak up, and I'll help figure it out.
Your challenges are important to me.
One of my priorities right now is describing how to set up various IDEs for working with Propeller GCC. Eclipse and Netbeans are fair candidates, but we don't have any plug-in automation for them. NetBeans seems to be the easiest to set up right now so that may be first. Codeblocks is also on the radar.
The actual IDE solution we end up with for hobbyists and education may end up being something completely different. Right now Propeller-GCC is a command line tool-chain only; some of us like it that way, others don't.
Summary? Maybe you should wait until I post some details on setting up an IDE. If you like the command line, you can get started now. There are some very simple examples in the README_WINDOWS.txt and in the propgcc wiki. There there are several demos in the distributions too.
Cheers Rick.
--Steve
I hope you'll jump in and try out GCC. No need to wait until beta. We're happy to help you with any problems you might encounter.
When I do readelf -h on the propeller-elf-* binaries, it says Class: ELF64, a readelf -h on bstc.linux gives me a Class: ELF32.
All this is on UBUNTU 11.10, 32 bit.
I'm relatively new on the Linux side too, so this could be pilot error.
Other than that, testing is going well!
It may be a while before a 32 bit version can be uploaded. Version 0_1_2 is definitely 32 bit.
I'll either drop back to 0_1_2 or switch to Windoze 7 :frown:
The windows v0_1_5 version is too big. It probably has leftovers from the newlib builds. There will be a leaner version posted soon.
We are thinking of producing a separate demo package later. That would help minimize downloads.
There are release notes in the wiki. http://code.google.com/p/propgcc/wiki/PropGccAlphaRelease They need to be updated.
http://propgcc.unixfu.com/
There is a 32bit snapshot version there you're welcome to try. Installation is that you untar it from your /usr/local directory and then add /usr/local/propeller/bin to your path.
That is NOT an official alpha image, it may eat your dog. It is a working snapshot that I've been building with.
Once the official alpha stuff has been made 32bit you can just go ahead and blow away /usr/local/parallax and it will be like it was never there.
Thanks,
Red
Pushed this one up yesterday:
http://code.google.com/p/propgcc/downloads/detail?name=linux-x86-32-propgcc_v0_1_7.tar.gz&can=2&q= (Linux PropGCC Distribution File - v0_1_7 (test only))
It is 32-bit. All subsequent builds will be 32-bit.