For business purposes, "Parallax Approved" is not even close to "Parallax Official". If it doesn't come from the Parallax website, with Parallax branding then it is third-party and an evaporation risk. Even if the engineer designing it wants to use Parallax product with a third-party toolset, the manager is likely to say no before the engineer can even get started.
But that's not the situation here. The 3rd party tools are already better in terms of compilation features, supported OS platforms, and number of available languages supported.
For business purposes, "Parallax Approved" is not even close to "Parallax Official". If it doesn't come from the Parallax website, with Parallax branding then it is third-party and an evaporation risk. Even if the engineer designing it wants to use Parallax product with a third-party toolset, the manager is likely to say no before the engineer can even get started.
But that's not the situation here. The 3rd party tools are already better in terms of compilation features, supported OS platforms, and number of available languages supported.
I'm describing the business mindset, not making a prediction. The larger the company the more it matters that everything comes from one company that can be sued for liquidated damages in the case of non-supply, or non-support.
Even if Parallax simply licensed one of the existing products, branded it with Parallax logos, and bought an insurance policy to cover them in case things went wrong, that is going to open some doors that currently will remain closed.
It doesn't have to make sense to the man-on-the-street (no gender bias intended; if you find it in that phrase you brought it yourself), it has to make sense to the manager.
Because of using Unixens only, I wouldn't have started propellering if there wouldn't have been BSTC. It turned into a zombie. Didn't Brad somewhen even mention to have lost the sources? HomeSpun and later OpenSpin came to the rescue. Now with FastSpin, SpinSim and GEAR on top of them, this makes a nice digitope. PropGCC? Enough! All is said, all is sad.
If only supporting Windows and one other widely available platform makes supporting non Windows software easier, why not choose the Raspberry Pi with Raspbian as the 2nd one? They are omnipresent, cheap and fast enough to get our Propeller sources compiled. Not a very desirable platform per se, but a de facto standard. Even the slowest PI (Pi1) can do it. Just like the 08/15 PC with Windows of the Linux universe. Only cheaper, and exactly this would give such a Propeller plus RPI bundle a boost in getting accepted widely.
Adding to yeti's comment, I think if Parallax is going to support the Pi, then it is possible to support other Linux distros. Raspbian is Debian based, so it is easy to use the packages in other Debian based OSes.
I know that Spin2 does not get favorable consideration here for what may be perfectly valid reasons, but what I want to achieve just isn't going to happen with a huge compiler. I want to make a very nimble development system that is at least as fast as a person can think, and very interactive. There is no current frame of reference for what this would be like. If this can be achieved, it would be more significant than whatever language it uses, because it would allow inventors to work way faster and have a lot more fun than what the current methodology affords. I realize that some people are just going to demand C, and I'm glad that you guys are tackling that. I am supportive, but only passively, at the moment, because I don't have unlimited bandwidth. I'm trying to realize what I've been thinking about for a long time.
Ah, once again, a limited special language. No direct access to the already existing arduino libraries. The new development system has to be really very nimble to be an advantage then.
Well, it is Parallax, who want to sell boards. At least I thought so. I give up and shut up and wait. Good luck!
Adding to yeti's comment, I think if Parallax is going to support the Pi, then it is possible to support other Linux distros. Raspbian is Debian based, so it is easy to use the packages in other Debian based OSes.
Don't underestimate the little differences. I'm running Debian, Devuan and Raspbian and the small differences can drive you crazy! E.g. up to Raspbian9 a GCC-4.6 was in the Raspbian9 repositories and with this, PropGCC4 could easily be built natively on the PI while it was much trickier or impossible on Debian9 and Devuan2 because of not having such a fossil GCC at hand. And UDEV rules on systems infected with Systemd sometimes differ to the ones on the not infected Debian siblings. Let's stop here with the differences...
I expect unofficial ports of Parallax's software for Raspbian would show up, but only needing to care for one more plattform would take much burden from Parallax and Propeller/PI bundles even could turn into a Parallax product. Let the community do the unofficial ports.
Adding to yeti's comment, I think if Parallax is going to support the Pi, then it is possible to support other Linux distros. Raspbian is Debian based, so it is easy to use the packages in other Debian based OSes.
Don't underestimate the little differences. I'm running Debian, Devuan and Raspbian and the small differences can drive you crazy! E.g. up to Raspbian9 a GCC-4.6 was in the Raspbian9 repositories and with this, PropGCC4 could easily be built natively on the PI while it was much trickier or impossible on Debian9 and Devuan2 because of not having such a fossil GCC at hand. And UDEV rules on systems infected with Systemd sometimes differ to the ones on the not infected Debian siblings. Let's stop here with the differences...
I expect unofficial ports of Parallax's software for Raspbian would show up, but only needing to care for one more plattform would take much burden from Parallax and Propeller/PI bundles even could turn into a Parallax product. Let the community do the unofficial ports.
That is my plan. Parallax only supporting one distro, and then the end user porting to his distro of choice. My choice of words was not the best to reflect this idea.
Anyway, gcc is pretty much universal, and the missing libs can be installed easily. There are plenty of forums and help out there.
For example, I know that SimpleIDE installs and runs well on Kubuntu, and probably it was not developed for it. Graphic environments are pretty much interchangeable. The problem starts when your hardware requires drivers that are not readily available on the repos.
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But that's not the situation here. The 3rd party tools are already better in terms of compilation features, supported OS platforms, and number of available languages supported.
I'm describing the business mindset, not making a prediction. The larger the company the more it matters that everything comes from one company that can be sued for liquidated damages in the case of non-supply, or non-support.
Even if Parallax simply licensed one of the existing products, branded it with Parallax logos, and bought an insurance policy to cover them in case things went wrong, that is going to open some doors that currently will remain closed.
It doesn't have to make sense to the man-on-the-street (no gender bias intended; if you find it in that phrase you brought it yourself), it has to make sense to the manager.
If only supporting Windows and one other widely available platform makes supporting non Windows software easier, why not choose the Raspberry Pi with Raspbian as the 2nd one? They are omnipresent, cheap and fast enough to get our Propeller sources compiled. Not a very desirable platform per se, but a de facto standard. Even the slowest PI (Pi1) can do it. Just like the 08/15 PC with Windows of the Linux universe. Only cheaper, and exactly this would give such a Propeller plus RPI bundle a boost in getting accepted widely.
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço
Ah, once again, a limited special language. No direct access to the already existing arduino libraries. The new development system has to be really very nimble to be an advantage then.
Well, it is Parallax, who want to sell boards. At least I thought so. I give up and shut up and wait. Good luck!
I expect unofficial ports of Parallax's software for Raspbian would show up, but only needing to care for one more plattform would take much burden from Parallax and Propeller/PI bundles even could turn into a Parallax product. Let the community do the unofficial ports.
Anyway, gcc is pretty much universal, and the missing libs can be installed easily. There are plenty of forums and help out there.
For example, I know that SimpleIDE installs and runs well on Kubuntu, and probably it was not developed for it. Graphic environments are pretty much interchangeable. The problem starts when your hardware requires drivers that are not readily available on the repos.
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço