Hi Erich,
Hi amForth coders,

@Erich: thank you for continuing the work on amForth!

I've been absent from amForth for a long time, but I consider to join
back in to do some work on the RISC-V and ARM side of things (I
currently have no usecase for AVR, but that is fine).

I want to respond to an list of questions from Erich earlier this year (sorry for being so late). I think these ideas could need more discussion.

- Whacky Ideas

 - git? -- With all the cool kids using git repositories, should
   I attempt do convert the existing repositories, webpage, etc?
   does sourceforge.net provide git repositories? Can the
   existing svn repository be converted on the server side?

I find SourceForge (SF) a real pain and I don't like to interact with
the SF system/webpage.

I think there is a =git= interface on SF, but it does not have the workflow the workflow that makes =git= successful elsewhere. =git= alone does not
help much, it's the workflow around it that makes developent and
contribution fun to use.

I really prefer to use SourceHut (https://sr.ht) these days, the
interface is quick and lean (no JavaScript required). I also find that Drew DeVault, who runs SH, has a good view on free software development.

GitLab and GitHub have their own problems, but are quite popular and, for
me, are less painful compared to SF.

 - Should we use a ticket system rather than mailing list?

Both. The ticket system should work over email and should integrate into an email workflow. A mailing list is nice(er) for general discussions.

 - Who of you is using which target controller? Would it be
   feasible to drop msp430, arm, risc-v in order to simplify the
   whole thing? yes/no?

As I would like to work on RISC-V and ARM, I vote =NO= here.

 - Can we get rid of the Atmel/Microchip Avrasm Assembler?

   One big difference between the avr8 and the risc-v tree is
   the assembly language. avr8 is using Atmels assembly. Which
   is good, because it is thoroughly documented. And which is
   bad, because there is no working free/libre alternative to
   avrasm.exe. Yes there is the "avra" project but it has been
   abandoned long ago. I have been able to assemble AmForth with
   avra way back in releases 4.2 up until maybe 4.9. I have even
   contributed a small patch to make atmega644p working.
   https://sourceforge.net/projects/avra/

   Matthias has contemplated the idea to port AmForth/avr8 to
   use gnu assembly. He might even have produced a working
   branch, I don't know.

I've used AVRA back in the day when I've worked with amForth 4.x.

Using Wine and non free software is generally a no go for me, esp. as I often work
on non-Intel machines (ARM, MIPS, PPC). There I need to be able to
compile from source.

   For risc-v there is no avr assembly, naturally. That's where
   all the .s assembly files come into the game.

   I personally would love to have a free/libre assembler for
   avr assembly. AVRASM.EXE is the only thing that forces me to
   install wine on my system.

Maybe porting amForth own AVR assembler
(http://amforth.sourceforge.net/TG/recipes/Assembler.html) to GNU/Forth
and use that as the base assembler?

Greetings

Carsten


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