Good morning AmForth'ers (feel free to adjust the greeting with your RTC). disclaimer: I am going to cherry pick the commentary by Tristan for this post. You can safely assume that the single quotes are their's and any quoted quotes are mine unless noted. This thread is getting a little wound up and I think it is important to be clear for anyone wanting to toss in their vote about what to do. But we need to do something or I fear the group will just finish dissolving.
> 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. > This is I think the core of it all. When I first talked about getting a working version of avra working with linux I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of people pop in to talk about it. I fully expected to hear from Tristan and Erich (hoped so anyway) since you both were the most active at the end of the recent activity. That others are still subscribed to this list and have an interest is great. This makes me think that we very well could (should) form a quorum, which, in our depleted state could be as little as 3. ;) > 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? > This seems to me to pretty much sum up a good mission statement of what AmForth is and why it can continue to be viable. Even with ONLY the focus on the AVR8 side of the repo, which is the core of it, adding more up to date chips as Tristan mentions later is a great way to interest new people and keep things from going to seed. So I'll sum up the points made and expand where needed. 0. Where should the official repo be? 1. At least two people with write access to the repo for redundancy. 2. Make a 7.0 release at that time including > a. the avra build > b. an up to date version of the project makefile > c. at least the first layers of documentation brought up to date > d. the prebuilt hex files (really just a cleaning of the project directory in general) 3. Deciding on a better way to communicate be it built in like github has or something that goes hand in hand. 4. Discussing what it would take to continue on with something like the RISC-V side of the repo. So, that is the way I see it. I'd like to add right up front that while I am not very skilled with forth I have spent a good deal of time learning how to get better with it. It is pretty much the only language I have studied these last couple of years. I am time rich so I will volunteer a portion of that time if there is a viable way to make AmForth feel more modern. To me right now it feels like an old dusty attic. There are still great things to be discovered, but they are up a creaky flight of stairs, in a poorly lit room and covered in a bit of dusty age. A big part of that for me is the Source Forge side. I use git locally and github publicly (although I have used a couple other flavors of public git when needed). I am painfully aware that there are issues in using github. I get that, but I like the overall tool and the fact there is no cost outlay to have something anyone can get at. A bugtracker, discussions, wiki etc are things I put a lot of value in when it comes to the choice if moving happens. At the very least though, some sort of better way to communicate is required. I love email but am finding more and more that less and less people use it as a primary means of communication. So coupling that with the somewhat more difficult method of the mailing list could perhaps, or I'd say probably, be a deterrent for people, in particular new people, to participate. I would like to have read and search access to all of the past mailing list text though since there are a lot of really good conversations and problem solving that have been done. If only to use that when bringing the documentation up to date. And that brings up a really big part of things, the documentation. The entire thing needs to be edited and overhauled. I honestly don't care what flavor of markup it uses. Most that I have used are similar enough that a small cheat sheet is all that is needed to be good at it. I will happily take a big part of that project once a decision has been reached on where it will live. While doing this the source tree should be cleaned up as well. There are some inconsistencies with the comments and stack effect diagrams, some things like should it be .dw $ff03 or .dw $0003. I'm pretty sure the former is the desired way since the newer files are like that, as well as the way that the AVR blanks to $ffff (I think). Perhaps then the refcard could once again be brought up to date from scratch giving yet another good thing for new people to access. I did have a look at the test host that Tristan put up temporarily at https://www.mostlymostly.uk/amforthdocs and it does seem to work perfectly. So keeping the RST stuff (of which there is a lot in the repo) is a very viable option no matter where things end up. I also was reading a gist about converting from that to markdown that I have been meaning to try to see how well it works. Okay, that went on way too long. But I did want to address the group since I have found so much value here in the last couple of years. I'll leave the quoted bit below from the original message since Tristan was very concise about things. I hope there are no hard feelings for dicing up this message to make it as legible as possible. I would like to see a more lively official AmForth home wherever and however it will end up. All the best, Mark 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 > _______________________________________________ > Amforth-devel mailing list for http://amforth.sf.net/ > Amforth-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/amforth-devel > _______________________________________________ Amforth-devel mailing list for http://amforth.sf.net/ Amforth-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/amforth-devel
