I am working on making a pretty trivial change to an old existing pascal source file. I have the source code, but need to generate a new hex file with my changes.
First, I tried compiling with "Embedded Pascal", which is the program used by my predecessor. Unfortunately, it is an unregistered copy and gives the message that the file is too large for the unregistered version. Support for and even the homepage for the project has disappeared (old), so I have no idea how I would register.
I tried a couple other compilers, "Free Pascal" and "Turbo51", and they are both giving similar errors:
Filename.pas (79): Error 36: BEGIN expected.
Linkcode $2E
^
The source code begins with
Linkcode $2E
LinkData $0A // normally 8 - make room for capacitance data
Program Main; Vector LongJmp Startup_Vector; //This inserts the start to the main routine.
uses IntLib;
I'm not well-versed in Pascal or embedded programming, but as I understand it, the Linkcode and LinkData lines are required to set up the RAM as needed. Following the "Const" and "var" declarations are subroutines that indeed start with procedure... begin... end.
I realize that Pascal is a bit out of date, but we are stuck with it and our old micro. Any ideas why previously working source code with trivial changes cannot be compiled? I am willing to consider other compilers, including paid options, if any are available with decent support. I am using Windows 10 x64 processor to compile, and flashing to an Atmel 89C51RC2.
If more source code is needed for diagnosis, please let me know what in particular, as I'll need to change some proprietary information before posting. Thanks!
Statements like linkcode and linkdata are not general, but target and compiler specific. Unless you have the know-how to reengineer to a different compiler, getting the original one is best.
Thanks to all for the information. While I didn't find an exact solution here, your comments were helpful for me to understand just how compiler-specific the Pascal code was.
In the end, I was able to get into my predecessors files and transfer registration, solving the issue for now. As suggested, I think I will port to C in the future to avoid fighting all the unsupported compiler nonsense.
I just converted one of the FsXaml demo programs to an interpreted F# script so I could experiment with it and learn. It wouldn't run, and the interpreter gave me the following error message:
System.NotSupportedException: The invoked member is not supported in a
dynamic assembly.
at System.Reflection.Emit.InternalAssemblyBuilder.GetManifestResourceStream(String
name)
at FsXaml.InjectXaml.from(String file, Object root)
at
FsXaml.App.InitializeComponent() at FsXaml.App..ctor()
at
FSI_0002.main[a](a argv)
in C:\Users\bobmc\OneDrive\FSharp\Learning\WPFExamples\FsXaml\demos\WpfSimpleMvvmApplication\WPFApp.fsx:line 104
at .$FSI_0002.main#() in
C:\Users\bobmc\OneDrive\FSharp\Learning\WPFExamples\FsXaml\demos\WpfSimpleMvvmApplication\WPFApp.fsx:line
109
Can I use the F# interpreter with FsXaml? Thanks to all for your help.
Unfortunately, WPF and scripts don't play well together.
The exception occurs within the WPF runtime itself - FsXaml.InjectXaml is using a XamlObjectWriter to populate the type with the contents from the XAML file. This type doesn't work if you're using a dynamic assembly (like FSI), which unfortunately means that FsXaml will likely never be able to work from FSI.
That being said, even if there was a way around this, it'd be of very limited use. WPF also has restrictions that make it not play well with a scripting scenario, such as the "only one application can ever be created within a given AppDomain" restriction. That one makes it so closing the "main" (first) window makes it so you can never open another one. As such, I haven't prioritized trying to make this work in FSI.
I'd be happy to accept contributions if somebody has an idea of how to make FsXaml play more nicely within the context of FSI, but at this point, I don't see a good solution for that usage scenario.
Edit: FsXaml 3.1.6 now includes functionality to make this a lot easier. It works well, provided you don't close the main window, or you use dialogs. There is a demo application/script illustrating this.
this is my first post, and it covers something which I've been trying to get working on and off for about a year now.
Essentially it boils down to the following: I have a copy of newlib which I'm trying to get working on an LPC2388 (an ARM7TDMI from NXP). This is on a linux box using arm-elf-gcc
The question I have is that I've been looking at a lot of the tutorials talking about porting newlib, and they all talk about the stubs (like exit, open, read/write, sbrk), and I have a pretty good idea of how to implement all of these functions. But where should I put them?
I have the newlib distribution from sources.redhat.com/pub/newlib/newlib-1.18.0.tar.gz and after poking around I found "syscalls.c" (in newlib-1.18.0/newlib/libc/sys/arm) which contains all of the stubs which I have to update, but they're all filled in with rather finished looking code (which does NOT seem to work without the crt0.S, which itself does not work with my chip).
Should I just be wiping out those functions myself, and re-writing them? Or should I write them somewhere else. Should I make a whole new folder in newlib/libc/sys with the name of my "architecture" and change the target to match?
I'm also curious if there's proper etiquette on distribution of something like this after releasing it as an open source project. I currently have a script which downloads binutils, arm-elf-gcc, newlib, and gdb, and compiles them. If I am modifying files which are in the newlib directory, should I hand a patch which my script auto-applies? Or should I add the modified newlib to the repository?
Thanks for bothering to read! Following this is a more detailed breakdown of what I'm doing.
For those who want/need more info about my setup:
I'm building a ARM videogame console based loosely on the Uzebox project ( http://belogic.com/uzebox/ ).
I've been doing all sorts of things pulling from a lot of different resources as I try and figure it out. You can read about the start of my adventures here (sparkfun forums, no one responds as I figure it out on my own): forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=22072
I followed all of this by reading through the Stackoverflow questions about porting newlib and saw a few of the different tutorials (like wiki.osdev.org/Porting_Newlib ) but they also suffer from telling me to implements stubs without mentioning where, who, what, when, or how!
But where should I put them?
You can put them where you like, so long as they exist in the final link. You might incorporate them in the libc library itself, or you might keep that generic, and have the syscalls as a separate target specific object file or library.
You may need to create your own target specific crt0.s and assemble and link it for your target.
A good tutorial by Miro Samek of Quantum Leaps on getting GNU/ARM development up and running is available here. The examples are based on an Atmel AT91 part so you will need to know a little about your NXP device to adapt the start-up code.
A ready made Newlib porting layer for LPC2xxx was available here, but the links ot teh files appear to be broken. The same porting layer is used in Martin Thomas' WinARM project. This is a Windows port of GNU ARM GCC, but the examples included in it are target specific not host specific.
You should only need to modify the porting layer on Newlib, and since it is target and application specific, you need not (in fact probably should not) submit your code to the project.
When I was using newlib that is exactly what I did, blew away crt0.s, syscalls.c and libcfunc.c. My personal preference was to link in the replacement for crt0.s and syscalls.c (rolled the few functions in libcfunc into the syscalls.c replacement) based on the embedded application.
I never had an interest in pushing any of that work back into the distro, so cannot help you there.
You are on the right path though, crt0.S and syscalls.c are where you want to work to customize for your target. Personally I was interested in a C library (and printf) and would primarily neuter all of the functions to return 0 or 1 or whatever it took to get the function to just work and not get in the way of linking, periodically making the file I/O functions operate on linked in data in rom/ram. Basically without replacing or modifying any other files in newlib I had a fair amount of success, so you are on the right path.
Since upgrading from 4.7 to ECC6 the ABAP compiler has become a lot stricter on the use of certain statements in the OO context.
For instance you're not allowed to use the statement LIKE, but in stead have to use TYPE and internal tables does not have an implicit header line, etc.
These restrictions are explained in greater detail here
MY QUESTION: To what extent does this restriction affect your existing code-base?.
We have over a thousand "Classes" written since 1998 in OO as far as it was available at the time. For the most part each class is its own include in SE38, with the class definition and implementation together in this include.
Up to now, we could successfully change and activate these classes as long as the main program was pre-existing in 4.7. Now we are trying to use one of these older classes in a new main program for regression test purposes, and we are getting the following error:
"Within classes and interfaces, you can only use "TYPE" to refer to ABAP Dictionary types (not "LIKE" or "STRUCTURE")."
This error is valid as per the current definition of the SAP language.
I would like to know wheter the SAP interpreter continues to run old code with obsolete statements intentionally, or whether a future patch may correct this "feature" and cause these classes to stop compiling.
Each development object is tagged with a version corresponding to the SAP version it was developed on. You can see this in version management or table VRSD.
As I understand it, that is there specifically so that code with statements that have been made illegal in later versions will survive an upgrade and continue to run.
This is why, when you attach an include developed in 4.5b to a class that was developed in NW700, it won't compile. The compiler knows that this is new dev, and its applying the rules accordingly.
The ABAP community has been informed for a really long time (years) that LIKEs, work areas, RANGEs etc. are obsolete.
I don't think SAP will kill any old code, but I wouldn't count on it if I were in charge.
So can they cause it to stop compiling: yes, will they: probably not.
I am dabbling in PHP and getting my feet wet browsing SO, and feel compelled to ask a question that I've been wondering about for years:
When you write an entirely new programming language, what do you write it in?
It's to me a perplexing chicken & egg thing to me. What do you do? Say to yourself Today I'm going to invent a new language! and then fire up. Notepad? Are all compilers built on previously existing languages, such that were one to bother one could chart all programming languages ever devised onto one monstrous branching tree that eventually grounded out at... I don't know, something old?
It's not a stupid question. It's an excellent question.
As already answered the short answer is, "Another language."
Well that leads to some interesting questions? What if its the very first language written for
your particular piece of hardware? A very real problem for people who work on embedded devices. As already answered "a language on another computer". In fact some embedded devices will never get a compiler, their programs will always be compiled on a different computer.
But you can push it back even further. What about the first programs ever written?
Well the first compilers for "high level languages" would have been written in whats called "assembly language". Assembly language is a language where each instruction in the language corresponds to a single instruction to the CPU. Its very low level language and extremely verbose and very labor intensive to write in.
But even writing assembly language requires a program called an assembler to convert the assembly language into "machine language". We go back further. The very first assemblers were written in "machine code". A program consisting entirely of binary numbers that are a direct one-to-one correspondence with the raw language of the computer itself.
But it still doesn't end. Even a file with just raw numbers in it still needs translation. You still need to get those raw numbers in a file into the computer.
Well believe it or not the early computers had a row of switches on the front of them. You flipped the switches till they represented a binary number, then you flicked another switch and that loaded that single number into the computers memory. Then you kept going flicking switched until you had loaded a minimal computer program that could read programs from disk files or punch cards. You flicked another switch and it started the program running. When I went to university in the 80's I saw computers that had that capacity but never was given the job of loading in a program with the switches.
And even earlier than that computer programs had to be hard wired with plug boards!
The most common answer is C. Most languages are implemented in C or in a hybrid of C with callbacks and a "lexer" like Flex and parser generator like YACC. These are languages which are used for one purpose - to describe syntax of another language. Sometimes, when it comes to compiled languages, they are first implemented in C. Then the first version of the language is used to create a new version, and so on. (Like Haskell.)
A lot of languages are bootstrapped- that is written in themselves. As to why you would want to do this, it is often a good idea to eat your own dogfood.
The wikipedia article I refer to discusses the chicken and egg issue. I think you will find it quite interesting.
Pretty much any language, though using one suited to working with graphs and other complex data structures will make many things easier. Production compilers are often written in C or C++ for performance reasons, but languages such as OCaml, SML, Prolog, and Lisp are arguably better for prototyping the language.
There are also several "little languages" used in language design. Lex and yacc are used for specifying syntax and grammars, for example, and they compile to C. (There are ports for other languages, such as ocamllex / ocamlyacc, and many other similar tools.)
As a special case, new Lisp dialects are often built on existing Lisp implementations, since they can piggyback on most of the same infrastructure. Writing a Scheme interpreter can be done in Scheme in under a page of code, at which point one can easily add new features.
Fundamentally, compilers are just programs that read in something and translate it to something else - converting LaTeX source to DVI, converting C code to assembly and then to machine language, converting a grammar specification to C code for a parser, etc. Its designer specifies the structure of the source format (parsing), what those structures mean, how to simplify the data (optimizing), and the kind of output to generate. Interpreters read the source and execute it directly. (Interpreters are typically simpler to write, but much slower.)
"Writing a new programming language" technically doesn't involve any code. It's just coming up with a specification for what your language looks like and how it works. Once you have an idea of what your language is like, you can write translators and interpreters to actually make your language "work".
A translator inputs a program in one language and outputs an equivalent program in another language. An interpreter inputs a program in some language and runs it.
For example, a C compiler typically translates C source code (the input language) to an assembly language program (the output language). The assembler then takes the assembly language program and produces machine language. Once you have your output, you don't need the translators to run your program. Since you now have a machine language program, the CPU acts as the interpreter.
Many languages are implemented differently. For example, javac is a translator that converts Java source code to JVM bytecode. The JVM is an interpreter [1] that runs Java bytecode. After you run javac and get bytecode, you don't need javac anymore. However, whenever you want to run your program, you'll need the JVM.
The fact that translators don't need to be kept around to run a program is what makes it possible to "bootstrap" your language without having it end up running "on top of" layers and layers of other languages.
[1] Most JVMs do translation behind the scenes, but they're not really translators in that the interface to the JVM is not "input language -> output language".
Actually you can write in almost any language you like to. There's nothing that prevents you from writing a C compiler in Ruby. "All" you have to do is parse the program and emit the corresponding machine code. If you can read/write files, your programming language will probably suffice.
If you're starting from scratch on a new platform, you can do cross-compiling: write a compiler for your new platform, that runs in Java or natively on x86. Develop on your PC and then transfer the program to your new target platform.
The most basic compilers are probably Assembler and C.
Generally you can use just about whatever language you like. PHP was written in C, for example. If you have no access to any compiler whatsoever, you're going to have to resort to writing assembly language and compiling it to machine code by hand.
Many languages were first written in another available language and then reimplemented in itself and bootstrapped that way (or just kept the implementation in the foreign language, like PHP and perl), but some languages, like the first assembler was hand compiled to machine code like the first C-compiler was hand compiled to assembly.
I've been interested in bootstrapping ever since I read about it. To learn more I tried doing it myself by writing my own superset of BF, which i called EBF, in itself. the first version of EBF had 3 extra primitives and I hand compiled the first binary. I found a two step rhythm when doing so. I implemented a feature in the current language in one release and had a sweet release where I rewrote the code to utilize the implemented feature. The language was expressive enough to be used to make a LISP interpreter.
I have the hand compiled version together with the source in the first release tag and the code is quite small. The last version is 12 times bigger in size and the code and allows for more compact code so hand compiling the current version would be hard to get right.
Edmund Grimley Evans did something similar with his HEX language
One of the interesting things about doing this yourself is that you understand why some things are as they are. My code was product if small incremental adjustments an it looks more like it has evolved rather than been designed from scratch. I keep that in mind when reading code today which I think looks a little off.
Usually with a general-purpose programming language suitable for systems development, e.g. C, Haskell, ML, Lisp, etc., but the list of options is long. Also, usually with some domain-specific languages for language implementation, i.e. parser and lexical analyzer generators, intermediate languages like LLVM, etc. And probably some shell scripts, testing frameworks, and a build configuration system, e.g. autoconf.
Most compiler were wriiten C or a c like program if not c then assembly lang is the way to go However when writing a new lang from scratch and you do not have a macro lib or source code from a prototype language you have to define your own functions Now in What Language? You can just write a Form "of source code called psedocode to the machine it looks like a bnf grammar from the object oriented structured lang spec like Fortran basic algo lisp. So image writing a cross code resembling any of these language syntax That's psedo code
What are programming languages in general?
programming languages are a just a way to talk to computers. roughly speaking at first because computers could only understand zeros and ones (due to the fact that computers are made of transistors as switches which could only take two states, we call these two states 0 and 1) and working with 0,1 was hard for us as humans so computer scientists decided to do a one-to-one mapping from every instruction in binary(0,1) to a more human readable form which they called it assembly language.
for example if we had an instruction like:
11001101
in assembly it would be called:
LOAD_A 15
which means that load the content of register a into memory location 15. as i said it was just a convention like choosing 0 and 1 for two states of the transistors or anything else in the computer.in this way having a program with 50 instructions , remembering the assembly language would be easier . so the user would write the assembly code and some program (assembler in this case) would translate the codes to binary instructions or machine language as they call it.
but then with the computers getting improved every day there was room for more complicated programs with more instructions, say 10000.
in this case a one-to-one mapping like assembly wouldn't work, so other high level programming languages were created. they said for example if for a relation with I/O devices for printing something on the screen created by the user takes about 80 instructions , let us do something in here and we could package all this code into one library and call it for example printf and also create another program which could translate this printf in here to the related assembly code and from there the assembly would do the rest. so they call it compiler.
so now every user who wants to just print something on the screen he wouldn't have to write all the instructions in binary or assembly he just types printf("something") and all the programs like the compiler and assembler would do the rest. now later other longer codes would be packaged in the same way to just facilitate the work of other people as you see that you could just simplify a thousands line of code into one code in python and pack it for the use of other people.
so let's say that you have packed a lot of different codes in python and created a module(libray, package or anything that you want to call it) and you call that module mgh(just my name). now let's say we have created this mgh somehow that any one who says:
import mgh
mgh.connect(ip,port.data)...
could easily connect to a remote server with the ip and port number specified and send the data afterwards(or something like that). now people could do all of it using one single line, but what that happens is that a lot of codes are getting executed which have been retrieved from the mgh file. and packaging it has not been for speeding up the process of execution but rather facilitating other programmers works. so in here if someone wants to use your code first he should import the file and then the python interpreter would recognize all the code in it and so it could interpret the code.
now if you want to create a programming language and you want to execute it , first it needs a translation, for example let's say that you create a program which could understand the syntax and convert it to c , in this case after it has been translated to c , the rest would be taken care of , by the c compiler , then assembler , linker, ... .
even though you would have to pay the price of being slower since it has to be converted to c first.
now one other thing that you could do is to create a program which could translate all the code to the equivalent assembly language just like what happens with c but in this case the program could do it directly and from there the rest would be done by the linker. we know that this program is called compiler.
so what i am talking about is that, the only code that the system understands is 0,1 , so somehow you should convert you syntax to that, now in our operating systems a lot of different programs like assembler, linker and ... have been created to tell you that if you could convert your code to assembly they could take care of the rest or as i said you could even use other programming languages compilers by converting your code to that language.
Even further binary ,or assembly operations must be translated into functions, thats the assemblers/compilers job, then into object,from data and functions, if you don't have a source file to see" how these objects functionality should be represented in your language implementation ,Then you have to recognize "see" implement, or define your own functions ,procedures, and data structures, Which requires a lot of knowledge, you need to ask yourself what is a function.Your mind then becomes the language simulation.This Separate a Master programmer from the rest.
I too had this question few months back. And I read few articles and watched some videos which helped me to start writing my own language called soft. Its not complete yet but I learned a lot of stuff from this journey.
Basic things you should know is how compiler works when it has to execute a code snippet. Compiler has a lot of phases like lexical analysis, semantic analyzer, AST(Abstract Syntax Tree) etc.
What I did in my new language can be found here - http://www.singhajit.com/writing-a-new-programming-language/
If you are writing a language for first time then all the best and you have a long way to go.