Hello Mark and fellow AmForth'ers,
I am guessing you mean the SourceForge repo and the mailing list?
Yes, my primary focus is the SF AmForth repo, website, community and
mailing list.
The fact is that this project is still useful.
I completely agree. AmForth is quite special as an embedded Forth in
that it has wordlists, recognizers and comprehensive documentation.
In suggesting a maintainer group the idea was that the effort required
to preserve and update AmForth could be divided up, and perhaps if
some of the more mundane aspects of avoiding bit rot are done, then
people with more specialised skills, but less time, might feel more
able to help.
What would I suggest for the near term?
1. A decision as to whether the SF AmForth repo, website and mailing
list should remain at SF or move elsewhere. Moving it will take some
effort, but some arguments and provisions for moving it have been
put forward and made.
2. A release adding avra as a build option.
3. Prebuilt hex files for UNO and MEGA added to release by default.
4. Update the docs where the passage of time has not been kind.
Whilst I'm new to sphinx and reStructuredText, the AmForth distribution
documentation does build easily and only minor changes would be needed
to host it pretty much anywhere. To verify this I have put it up
temporarily at https://www.mostlymostly.uk/amforthdocs and done some
tests with github pages [3]
I'm reasonably sure that a good chunk of the above (excepting point 1)
has already been done by individuals on the list, so it is more
coordination and administration than anything else. Elements of
the above that have not been done, I am happy to do.
What would I like to see longer term?
1. For avr8. The ATmega328 (like me) is no longer a spring chicken. It
would be great to see AmForth running on, say, an ATmega4809 [1]. It
is one of the megaAVR 0-series with newer peripherals, including a
CCL. I've used similar on newer PIC mcus and they are very nice to
have. Why the ATmega4809 in particular? (a) There is some support for
it in avra (b) it is on the Arduino Nano Every [2] (c) it is available
in 40 Pin DIP (48 pin die, minus some pads). I would be interested to
know if anyone has done it/similar or how hard it might be ;)
2. For RISC-V. Of AmForth's non-avr8 branches it is the one that
interests me most. The hardware used to be relatively expensive and
hard to come by. Now it is not, which presents the problem of
choice. It would be nice to have an approachable build for AmForth
RISC-V on an inexpensive but obtainable board - but which one? Again,
I would be interested in what people have done and opinions as to what
might work. Additionally, has anyone got AmForth RISC-V running in a
simulator?
There is something about thinking in forth that seems to be good for
my aging brain.
I feel the same way.
Best wishes,
Tristan
[1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/atmega4809
[2] https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/nano-every
[3] https://docs.github.com/pages
On 2023-09-14 11:11, Mark Roth wrote:
Hello, Tristan (and all the rest of the community).
I am guessing you mean the SourceForge repo and the mailing list? I
wish I
could offer more help with this but I am at a loss with the assembly
stuff.
It would be nice to have the website info protected
(amforth.sourceforge.net)
since there is so much good information there. And what to do about the
mailing list? I still search them for help now and again. Can it be
archived in some way? I know the website information is in the svn repo
and
could be pulled out easily enough.
My bigger issue with making any changes to the assembler files is that
I
have no way to test the MSP430 stuff. I can't seem to locate one of the
chips or boards to at least make sure it would work. It's also a pity
that
the risc-v stuff wasn't further along since that does seem to be
something
that would be useful.
So I would support in what minimal way I can. I know there are those of
you
that have been here for a long time. The fact is that this project is
still
useful. It just seems to work. So long as I have access to 8 bit avr
chips
I'm sure I'll be playing around with AmForth. There is something about
thinking in forth that seems to be good for my aging brain. And there
is no
denying that having register level access is great.
Mark
On Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 6:05 PM tristan <h...@tjnw.co.uk> wrote:
Fellow AmForth-ers,
Perhaps it is time again to consider having a formal maintainer for
AmForth. Back in May 2022 Erich stepped down [1] and put in place
various resources that could be potentially be used to maintain
AmForth (in addition to those that already exist at sourceforge)
To my knowledge, nobody from the mailing list has volunteered
individually. Additionally, having a single maintainer does have its
own issues. So perhaps a way forward would be to have a small group of
maintainers for AmForth. The revelation from Mark R [2] that the
latest
AmForth can be made using avra does make a difference to me, such that
I
would volunteer for such a group. So are there others on the mailing
list who would be willing to join such a maintainers group?
Kind regards and best wishes,
Tristan
[1] https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/37656453/
[2] https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/37887282/
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