Bobby,
I suspected I wasn't the only one who experienced this documentation shortfall.
I've seen lots of software projects go this way over the years, and it starts
with the coder/designer sitting down and coding something, then figuring out
what he's created. If he "gets around to it" then a document is generated,
though it may or may not reflect what's been coded. Most of the time, it
reflects how it was coded and not so much why, and seldom does it actually
reflect design goals that the coder had in mind when setting about to write the
product. When I last looked at portions of LINUX, I was surprised to find code
that had drivers containing comments from versions numbered below 1.0, yet the
code, back in the mid-'90's was released at version 13.-something. Those
comments should have been deleted when the code was changed ... <sigh> ... and,
hopefully, replaced with something relevant.
When I stopped writing code for a living, which was before the advent of 'C'
and Pascal (Nobody remembers that, do they?) as the popular learning vehicles,
folks who wrote programs for a living tended to work from an objective
specification that had been "approved" by the people paying for the work. If
the resulting work product didn't pretty precisely match the objective
specification, the programmer lost his job and, since nearly everyone engaged
in that sort of work at the time knew each other, that meant he'd have trouble
finding work thereafter, aside, perhaps, from waiting tables or washing dishes.
Today, everyone seems to know more about 'C' than I, though they seldom
document their code properly, or even sufficiently to make it readable, and
that's why much of the software we see is so large, complex, and often faulty.
Over the years, I have become moderately proficient at writing documentation,
among other things, and I'd be happy to help generate a more
user-manual-for-Windows-Users sort of document that assumes nothing about one's
knowledge of LINUX or *NIX, and targets those who would prefer to utilize this
tool set from Windows rather than having to move to LINUX, if only I could find
out how to use the tool set in the first place. I can't document what I don't
know.
Now, I'm like most other folks, in that I have to keep the wolf from the door,
and that requires me to do other things, mostly involving things others want me
to do, from time to time. I have very little time for hobby projects, and,
sadly, my alligator mouth often overloads my hummingbird "other end" when it
comes to promising freebies to people I encounter along the way, which doesn't
help with my time budget.
I'd even be interested in helping with the generation of a simulator for the
various MCU's, starting of course, with the 805x's as those are the ones of
current interest, as I made writing simulations my primary area of academic
interest back in the '60's when I was in college. The documentation of SDCC
must come first, though, if I'm to do anything along those lines.
regards,
Richard Erlacher
----- Original Message -----
From: Bobby Garner
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; sdcc-user@lists.sourceforge.net
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Sdcc-user] Virus in SDCC-2.8.0-setup.exe - MD5 etc tutorial
Hello All,
As a beginner (I've written one real C application), using SDCC with an Atmel
8051 micro on an XP machine, I can certainly empathize with Richard. While the
advice in these exchanges is helpful, It doesn't address the question of better
documentation.
It is in fact as I see it, an admission that the documentation is inadequate.
Further, it suggests that nothing is going to be done about it.
Bobby Garner
Maarten Brock wrote:
Hi Richard,
Now, SDCC is a great concept if, for example, it's easy to integrate with an
assembler, a linker, a simulator, a librarian, and all the other utilities
that are helpful in developing code.
SDCC for the 8051 only works with the assembler and linker that come
with it, sorry. It needs a separate assembler and linker and AFAIK
there is no other free/open source option available.
I just learned that the SiLabs
environment (IDE) without which it's apparently a pain to use their MCU's,
relies upon OMF files produced by SDCC tools, among others. That's why I'm
taking another look. The small bits of code I usually prepare for the
805x-series (up to, say, 12k-15k lines of ASM) are generally monolithic,
hence, don't require the linker, etc. Up to now, I've written code segments
and de-loused them separately, since the things I do, though sometimes
bigger than 8kB of object code, are seldom terribly complex. After that, I
simply combine those portions of code as macros or as subroutines.
Unfortunately the assembler that comes with SDCC does not support
macros. But the assembler/linker combination can also output OMF
files without being called by SDCC. And thus the SiLabs IDE can
download and debug the output. The SiLabs IDE can download only HEX-
files (which have no debug information) and OMF-files (which do). If
your favourite assembler (with or without linker) can generate OMF
files, the IDE should be able to load and debug them. The only real
issue I can think of would be the endianness for displaying
multibyte variables. Both big-endian and little-endian are supported
so choose a compiler setting with compatible endianness.
Hope this helps,
Maarten Brock
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