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Standalone Propeller-Load — Parallax Forums

Standalone Propeller-Load

SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
edited 2013-12-02 16:28 in Propeller 1
Edit: Jazzed came up with a good solution here: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/148924-Loader.exe-coming-for-.elf
I would like to request a standalone version of the Propeller-load, preferable with a simple GUI.

Use case:
Propeller GCC developer Dashing and Dangerous Dominic is developing code, and wants to share it with several testers located remotely. These testers have no command line skills, and don't want to install yet another program. Dominic sends the generated elf file to them, and they use Propeller-LoadGUI to install the elf file on the Propeller device.

Useful Features
- The command line switches from Propeller-load*
- Cross platform

*A terminal input/output would be nice, but if it's too much trouble then I (personally) don't really care.

Comments

  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 21:18
    SRLM wrote: »
    I would like to request a standalone version of the Propeller-load, preferable with a simple GUI.

    Use case:
    Propeller GCC developer Dashing and Dangerous Dominic is developing code, and wants to share it with several testers located remotely. These testers have no command line skills, and don't want to install yet another program. Dominic sends the generated elf file to them, and they use Propeller-LoadGUI to install the elf file on the Propeller device.

    Useful Features
    - The command line switches from Propeller-load*
    - Cross platform

    *A terminal input/output would be nice, but if it's too much trouble then I (personally) don't really care.

    I guess you mean a standalone GUI version of propeller-load since the command line version of propeller-load is already a standalone program. I have started thinking about this a number of times but other things always seem to get in the way. Also, I wasn't sure Parallax really had any desire for this since SimpleIDE already provides a terminal emulator and uses the command line propeller-load to load code. It would be kind of fun to work on a GUI loader though. If it seems like there is enough interest, I may try to build one using Qt. That seemed to work well for Steve with SimpleIDE.
  • SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
    edited 2013-03-25 21:26
    Yep, I'm looking for something really light weight that can be included in emails, and run without any technical knowledge. It would be really cool if there was a version of the program that allowed you to bundle an elf with the downloader gui, so that the user only had to double click on the program and everything is run by the preset configuration ( set by the bundle creator).

    Is there a Propeller-load program that I can include in an email, and people can drop it in a folder and run? It's my understanding that you have to install the PropGCC tools to get Propeller-load.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 21:32
    SRLM wrote: »
    Yep, I'm looking for something really light weight that can be included in emails, and run without any technical knowledge. It would be really cool if there was a version of the program that allowed you to bundle an elf with the downloader gui, so that the user only had to double click on the program and everything is run by the preset configuration ( set by the bundle creator).

    Is there a Propeller-load program that I can include in an email, and people can drop it in a folder and run? It's my understanding that you have to install the PropGCC tools to get Propeller-load.
    You do have to install propgcc to get propeller-load but the executable itself can be used without the rest of propgcc. The only thing it really needs is a board configuration file for whatever board you're targeting and a cache driver if the program uses one of the XMM modes. However, propeller-load is a command line program so the user would have to be comfortable typing command lines or you'd have to also include a .bat file. Tthis is Windows you're talking about, right?
  • kuronekokuroneko Posts: 3,623
    edited 2013-03-25 21:34
    SRLM wrote: »
    Yep, I'm looking for something really light weight that can be included in emails, and run without any technical knowledge.
    Who is installing the FTDI drivers then?
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 21:35
    kuroneko wrote: »
    Who is installing the FTDI drivers then?
    There isn't anything in propgcc that automatically installs the FTDI drivers. Maybe SimpleIDE handles that? I have never installed SimpleIDE from Steve's installer. When I've used it, I've built it myself from sources from Google Code.
  • SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
    edited 2013-03-25 21:42
    I use Ubuntu, but almost everyone I know uses Windows.
    kuroneko wrote: »
    Who is installing the FTDI drivers then?

    Presumably they are already installed (are they on Windows? I've been microsoft free for about 32 months now, so I don't know). If the drivers aren't already there, then it would be fine to walk them through the installation once.
  • kuronekokuroneko Posts: 3,623
    edited 2013-03-25 21:52
    SRLM wrote: »
    Presumably they are already installed (are they on Windows? I've been microsoft free for about 32 months now, so I don't know). If the drivers aren't already there, then it would be fine to walk them through the installation once.
    Before I started with the prop I didn't have them installed so unless you have them already they are needed. Which would make the simple email solution less simple, that's why I was asking.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 21:53
    kuroneko wrote: »
    Before I started with the prop I didn't have them installed so unless you have them already they are needed. Which would make the simple email solution less simple, that's why I was asking.
    Does the Propeller Tool automatically install the FTDI drivers?
  • kuronekokuroneko Posts: 3,623
    edited 2013-03-25 21:55
    David Betz wrote: »
    Does the Propeller Tool automatically install the FTDI drivers?
    Yes, update or fresh install (it's been a while).
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 21:57
    kuroneko wrote: »
    Yes, update or fresh install (it's been a while).
    If that's the case I imagine SimpleIDE will as well. I should check with Steve to see how it's done. Anyway, there is no GUI version of propeller-load at the moment. If one ever gets written it would be good to have it know how to install the drivers though.

    Edit: Thinking about it, Qt may not be the best way to make a GUI version of propeller-load that is easy to distribute since I think you need a bunch of libraries and other junk along with your Qt program executable. It would be nice to find a cross-platform GUI library that could create standalone appications that require nothing other than the executable.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2013-03-25 22:08
    At the moment SimpleIDE FTDI drivers are handled by instructions in a Parallax web page.

    There is no such thing as a "Free and Small" Qt GUI. Either you use huge shared libraries free, or you pay for the rights to use library archives.
    A Qt GUI package could be "relatively small" though - about 20MB -vs- 100MB.

    Maybe a GTK Perl or Python solution would work. Perl can be packaged into about a 2MB .exe or used as a script. There is a Python loader somewhere in the forums.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-25 22:10
    jazzed wrote: »
    At the moment FTDI drivers are handled by instructions in a Parallax web page for all products AFAIK.

    There is no such thing as a "Free and Small" Qt GUI. Either you use huge shared libraries free, or you pay for the rights to use library archives.
    A Qt GUI package could be "relatively small" though - about 20MB -vs- 100MB.

    Maybe a GTK Perl or Python solution would work. Perl can be packaged into about a 2MB .exe or used as a script. There is a Python loader somewhere in the forums.
    Perl? Ugh. Python would be okay but I doubt that would be small either. Maybe I'll have to look at WX Widgets again... Of course, I first have to determine if there is any demand for a standalone loader and terminal emulator.
  • KyeKye Posts: 2,200
    edited 2013-03-26 06:29
    Mmm, my CMUcam4GUI with Qt 4.8.1 only takes up about 20 MB... this includes the 4 shared libraries in release mode.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-03-26 06:33
    Kye wrote: »
    Mmm, my CMUcam4GUI with Qt 4.8.1 only takes up about 20 MB... this includes the 4 shared libraries in release mode.
    That's good to know although 20mb is still pretty big for a loader. I guess download speeds are fast enough these days that it shouldn't really make that much difference though.
  • jac_goudsmitjac_goudsmit Posts: 418
    edited 2013-03-26 07:13
    SRLM, if all you want is a simple Download-and-Run solution to distribute Propeller image files so that people can simply upgrade the firmware to a Propeller based project without even knowing what a Propeller is, I think it can possibly be done with products such as InnoSetup. It produces executables that run on Windows only, but they are self-contained (no need for 100MB or 200MB GUI libraries) and if the FTDI drivers are needed, they can be wrapped into the executable as well. It provides a GUI that should look familiar to most users and it's scriptable enough to run propeller-loader by itself or in a batch file.

    As for footprints, I don't know how big an Innosetup installer would be with the FTDI drivers included (by the way I'm pretty sure the FTDI drivers are on WindowsUpdate nowadays; that means you won't need to include the drivers at all) but with only the propeller loader and a 32KB eeprom file included, it should be very small. I would be surprised if the result would be more than a few megabytes.

    Innosetup works with an ASCII (or UTF-8 or Unicode, whatever) source file that can easily be generated from a batch file so the work on the developer side of the equation can also be automated.

    ===Jac
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2013-03-26 15:07
    A windows batch file (*.bat) can be double-clicked to run from windows explorer.
    There is no GUI support, but that big ugly command window can offer status info.
  • SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
    edited 2013-12-02 16:28
    This thread appears to be the first Google result for a relevant search, so I think I'll post a link to a solution:

    http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/148924-Loader.exe-coming-for-.elf
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