I'm looking for a compiler or interpreter for a language with basic math support and File IO which can be executed directly from a memorystick in either Linux or Windows. Built in functionality for basic datastructures and sorting/searching would be a plus.
(I've read about movable python, but it only supports windows)
Thank you
Not sure what are the issues there for the other languages, but I am pretty sure that Lua will work fine on such environment.
It is perfect for your requirements: basic I/O, math functions, excellent data structures (all based on numeric and associative array, with any kind of key/values, allowing the most complex operations).
Bonus: very simple to learn (for the bases, at least), readable, and powerful when you start to dig. And it starts to have a number of useful libraries, sockets, regexes and parsers, GUI, etc.
It is just a single binary file, no install at all, no registry access, no file access (beyond reading the binary and script!) if not requested, totally transparent: it is often used in embedded system, often memory constrained, on Roms, etc.
There is a python distribution called Movable Python which is designed to do exactly that. It might do what you want. Also, MinGW/MSYS will run on Windows with no registry entries or other installation beyond placing the files in a directory tree - all you need to do is set up the relevant directories in the path, which can be done in a batch file.
The Java JDK easily fits on a stick, and does not require installation; You can install it to a PC first and then just copy the install directory to the stick. I presume you can do the same for the Linux JDK.
And there's a ton of good text editors that don't require installation.
Not sure if it still applies to current versions, but I have an ancient perl.exe (version 5.001, from 1994 or 1995) that still works perfectly fine as a no-installation single executable.
If you can tolerate TCL, it's hard to beat a tclkit
TCC (the Tiny C Compiler) is a full implementation of C in a really small package. You can even write shell scripts in C:
#!/usr/local/bin/tcc -run
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello World\n");
return 0;
}
TCC is available for any Unix-like platform, and also for Windows.
I've done exactly that with Ruby. Worked well.
I'm way late for this party, but I thought I'd weigh in anyway.
I currently have a Windows-usable USB stick with the following installed on it (for Windows):
Languages
Java
Erlang
Fantom
Groovy
Haskell
jacl (JVM-based Tcl)
JavaFX
JRuby (JVM-based Ruby)
Jython (JVM-based Python)
NASM
nice
pnuts
Rexx
Scala
SISC (JVM-based Scheme)
Sleep
Tcl
Prolog
gawk (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
jawk (JVM-based AWK)
ANTLR
Clojure
JBasic (JVM-based BASIC)
Tuprolog (JVM-based Prolog)
Rhino (JVM-based Javascript)
YASM
Lua
Kahlua (JVM-based Lua)
C (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
C++ (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
Fortran77 (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
Ada (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
Programming Tools
jEdit (JVM-based programmer's editor)
Ant (JVM-based build tool)
Maven 2 (JVM-based build tool)
vi (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
Vim
CMake
gmake (via GnuWin32 and MinGW/MSys)
Leiningen
Subversion
Fossil
ANTLRworks
ctags/etags
Geek Toys
All SIMH emulators, with networking if available
Several operating systems, utilities, etc. for same
And a cast of dozens in key libraries, plus the Geronimo application server.
Yes, this is a single USB stick, and I probably missed an item here or there while making this list. It's amazing what you can run off of a USB stick these days.
http://smallbasic.sourceforge.net/
Runs anywhere (even mobiles) and has everything you need.
You could use DevCpp, it comes with Mingw 3.x or CodeLite (Mingw 4.x) for C/C++. For Pascal you can use DevPas, for Python web development try InstantDjango or better yet Web2py (very nice indeed!), for Ruby you have InstanRails, for Perl you got a complete enviroment (even a C compiler!) with StrawberryPerl. You could install cygwin on the USB drive. There are a lot more options out there. Interested in a LISP like portable/cross-platform and little language? Try newlisp (its a gem!). Also you could run almost anything (linux or windows based) on a portable VM under Portable VirtualBox/VMplayer or QEmu with a performance tax ;).
Why not C++? You can statically link in any external librarys assuming there lisence allows it, and you won't have any external dependencies.
Related
I really like live smalltalk environment (though I only experimented a bit with Pharo), but there is one thing why I can't really use it for everyday development. It seems that it is not possible to create a native standalone executable from smalltalk system. The native standalone executable means to create a single executable file (PE on windows, ELF on linux, Mach-O on macosx), that a user could run by double clicking it without the need to install any additional execution environments. Am I missing something and it is in fact possible to create native standalone executable with smalltalk?
If we talk about Pharo specifically. I know that Pharo's environment includes efficient just in time compiler (that generates true native code from Pharo's VM bytecode), I know that the VM image can be stripped down by cutting of the code that my application won't ever need. So basically we already have almost everything (except the linker I guess) to be able to create native standalone executables. Cross-compilation shouldn't be a problem too, if we put all code generation stuff (for all target processors) in the image.
I know that in smalltalk world it is considered to be a good thing to deliver the whole VM image separately from the runtime environment, so the user can hack on software he/she is using. However I don't see any good reasons why it shouldn't be possible to deliver your smalltalk software as fully compiled native standalone executable. Could you please explain me why it is not a common thing to do in smalltalk world? Is there any good smalltalk implementation that allow to do it?
To sum all this. I dream of a live smalltalk environment, where I could develop and test my software, but then (when the software is actually ready for delivery) cross-compile it to native executables for windows, linux and macosx from my single development machine. That would be really awesome.
ironically enough there is one thing that an exe needs to be preloaded. Your OS. See the thing is that C/C++ can be so light because already your OS acts pretty much as the image acts with a ton of preloaded libraries. You need to waste several GBs of memory just get a simple calculator starting. Your OS is a collection of C/C++ libraries.
Things are not any prettier with other languages like python, java etc , even if the app is smaller, they still depend on this libs and they come will quite big libraries that would need installation whether your app use them or not.
Pharo and Smalltalk in general is diffirent case because they aspire to be a virtual OS by itself. The diffirence with a real OS , the smalltalk image is made to be hacked the easy way by a user .
Saying that you can rename the pharo executable, change its icon, disable to IDE tools inside Pharo so your user sees only the GUI of your App. Applications like Dr. Geo and Phratch already do this.
Compiling a Pharo project to a native executable will not make much difference, because a) Pharo is already compiled to a native executable b) you dont need to do that since Pharo is already standalone does not need to even be installed.
My advice is stop worrying about things that do not really matter and enjoy learning how powerful and fun Pharo can be.
Not Pharo, but native, compiled (through ANSI C or its own JIT) smalltalk [applications] (with ability to load pre-compiled DLLs or [JIT-]compile code on demand):
Smalltalk/X
http://www.exept.de/en/products/smalltalk-x.html
or (unofficial enhanced development version):
Smalltalk/X JV branch - https://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx-jv/
Nearly completely open-source. Everything except librun (core runtime - memory management, JIT, etc.) and stc (smalltalk-to-c) compiler is already open-source. Claus Gittinger / Exept also promised/confirmed they would release remaining sources were they to stop further development (AFAIK, those parts are closed only because of concerns of existing clients).
I highly recommend everyone to check it out, it is a wonder such a great implementation is so little known.
You might also check out Dolphin from Object Arts.
It is windows only, but the very best IDE, bar none.
If you do anything in Smalltalk, you should buy a copy.
(They also have a free non-commercial version, but you will
want to support the kind of craftsmanship behind it by buying
the Pro version. An absolutely kick-ass product, IMHO).
It will produce a standalone exe, if that's what you want.
I made an exe of a medium-featured wiki with it - the exe was
less than 1 MB. That is not a typo.
-Jim
The problem is that Pharo, in that case, cannot be compared to any native compiler like C, C++ or others, but more like java, python, ruby and other languages with a Virtual Machine around.
In these languages, you produce jars, eggs or gems to distribute your project.
In Pharo, you produce a "production image" following technics you already mentioned. But nothing prevents you to deliver an artefact including also the PharoVM (it is 2m large, after all), and you can prepare your apps to detect and open your production image (without having to ask for it).
It is about as practical with Smalltalk as with other languages: not very much. As soon as you create a somewhat larger application, you start depending on other libraries/applications being installed. If you compile them statically with the application, you have now created a much larger application that takes longer to download, and needs to be updated at least as soon as a security problem is found in one of the dependencies. If not, your application is no longer double-click startable.
There are two directions for solutions: web applications, and installers and package managers.
Squeak still maintains its one-click installer, allowing the same set of files to work on windows, mac and linux. Pharo used to have that too, but moved to having separate builds. The need hasn't been so large that the one-click build has been reinstated. It is mostly seen as useful to be able to carry around a cross-platform environment on an usb-stick. With the move to the 64-bit spur vm the dependency problems will lessen as more of the needed libraries will come pre-installed on those platforms.
Dolphin Smalltalk can produce a standalone .exe for Windows.
This is a key feature of the Pro version.
Your dream has been around since the mid-80's and it is called Smalltalk/X.
I'm interested in learning the art of Makefile projects. However, I have one concern.
For background:
On my computer, I have nmake installed, which I'm assuming came with Visual Studio when I installed it. I am possibly thinking of having my C++ projects use the makefile structure using nmake. But what if I wanted to move to other popular versions of make? gmake? This leads me to my main question:
If I learned one implementation of make (nmake, gmake) and moved to another, to what extent can I expect a difference in makefile syntax? In conventions/practices?
If there is a substantial difference between each implementation, I have a followup question (a bit opinionated):
Which implementation of make should I learn first and why?
cmake is not an implementation of make at all. It's a completely different tool: cmake is a tool that creates project build control files, such as makefiles, Visual Studio project files, Xcode project files, Eclipse project files, etc. Cmake syntax has no relationship whatsoever to make syntax.
nmake is a "sort of" make tool, but it's also different than other versions of make; most other versions of make (GNU make, Solaris make, BSD make, etc.) conform at least to the POSIX specification for make. nmake (as far as I'm aware) doesn't do that. However the basic syntax of nmake for defining rules is similar to other versions of make.
GNU make is a highly portable version of make that supports POSIX, plus a large number of non-portable extensions. However, GNU make itself is highly portable: in addition to Windows (both native and cygwin) and UNIX (BSD, Linux, Solaris, etc.) systems, it also supports VMS and other operating systems.
Of the above, nmake is the least portable option; it's available only on Windows. cmake is a good choice if you want to use a variety of development tools, but it is not in any way make-like. If you want to learn make and makefiles and be portable across a wide variety of platforms, your best bet is GNU make.
In writing an install script, I quickly found that I'd have cross-platform issues, and bash scripts are hard to maintain. I decided to look for a cleaner solution that's more cross-platform.
The goal is to have an intelligent script sniff out components of the user's system and have as little user interaction as possible. That being stated, I thought about these languages:
Python- cross-platform, and many other programs rely on it, so it may already be present
Javascript- nodejs is required by part of my application, but it's a little clunky for exec calls
Are there any languages that would be a better fit for this application?
Requirements:
Available on all platforms
May be distributed as part of my application if small enough
Little to no version variation, so Ruby is out
*nix only for now, but eventually will be run on Windows
Maintainable
Clear syntax (Perl is out)
Modular (if I sniff the OS, I can include separate OS-specific code)
Capable of downloading files (unmet dependencies)
Capable of relatively complex scripting tasks
Testing for used HTTP ports
Reading and parsing files for configuration data
Checking for permissions and changing directories of insufficient privileges
Open source
Python can do all of those things:
Available on all platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows, and more)
May be distributed as part of my application if small enough (You can make binaries with cx_freeze, if needed)
Little to no version variation, so Ruby is out (Python is pretty static when it comes to version changes)
*nix only for now, but eventually will be run on Windows (It comes pre-installed on Mac, and ships with just about any Linux distro. Binaries don't need the interpreter to run)
Maintainable
Clear syntax (Perl is out) (Python is very easy to read, but that's up to you to decide)
Modular (if I sniff the OS, I can include separate OS-specific code) (Modules are just files in Python)
Capable of downloading files (unmet dependencies) (Urllib2 takes care of that, and it's pre-installed)
Open source (Yep)
Ant will do what you need. It is OS independent and will allow compiles and installs.
I am a newbie to embedded developement, as figure shown. I have a small ARM board, AT91SAM7-EX256. I have also a JTAG programmer dongle, too. I am using Linux (Ubuntu x86_32) on my notebook and desktop machine. I'm using CodeSourcery Lite for cross-compiling to ARM-Linux.
Am I right that I can't use this Linux-target cross-compiler to make binary or hex files for the small ARM board (it comes without any operating system)? Should I use the version called ARM EABI instead?
As I see, it's a "generic" ARM compiler. I've read some docs, and there're lot of options to specify the processor type and instruction set (thumb, etc.), there will be no problem with it. But how can I tell the compiler, how should the image (bin/hex) looks like for the specific board (startup, code/data blocks etc.)? (In assemblers, there're the org and load directives for it.)
What software do I need to capture some debug messages from the board on my PC? I don't want to on-board debugging, I just need some detailed run-time signal, more than just blinking leds.
I have an option to use MS-Windows, I can get a dedicated machine for it. Do you recommend it, is it much easier?
Can I use inline assembly somehow in my C code? I dunno anything about that. Can I use C++ or just C?
I have also a question, which don't need to answer: are there really 4096 kind of GNU compilers and cross-compilers (from Linux_x86_32 -> Linux_x86_32, Linux_x86_32 -> Linux_ARM, OSX -> Linux_ARM, PPC_Linux -> OSX) and 16 different GNU compiler sources (as many target platforms/processors exists) around? The signs says "yes", but I can't believe it. Correct me, and show me the GNU compiler which can produce object file for any platform/processor, and the universal linker which can produce executable for any platform.
While Windows is not a "better" platform do this kind of embedded development on, it may be easier to start with since you can get a pre-built environment to work with. For example, Yagarto (which I would recommend).
Setting up an embedded development environment on Linux can require a considerable amount of knowledge, but it's not impossible.
To answer your questions:
Your Linux cross-compiler comes with libraries to build executables for a Linux environment. You have hinted that you want to build a bare-metal executable for this board. While you can do this with your compiler, it will just confuse things. I recommend building a baremetal cross-compiler. Since you're building your own baremetal executable (and thus you are the operating system, the ABI doesn't matter since you're generating all of the code and not interoperating with other previously built code.
There are several versions of the ARM instruction set (and Thumb). You need to generate code for your particular processor. If you generate the code for a newer version of the instruction set, you will likely generate code which generates a reserved instruction exception. Most prebuilt gcc cross-compiler toolchains for ARM are "multilib" and will build for a variety of architectures in both ARM and Thumb.
Not sure exactly what you're looking for here. This is a bare metal platform. You can use the debugger channel to send messages if you're debugging on target, or you'll need to build your own communication channel into the firmware you write (i.e. uart support).
See above.
Yes. See here for details on gcc's extended inline assembly syntax. You can do this in C++ and C. You can also simply link pure assembly files.
There is no universal gcc compiler / linker. You need a uniquely built compiler for each host / target combination you use.
Finally, please take a look at Atmel's documentation. They have a wealth of information on developing for this target as well as a board package with the needed linker directives and example programs. Note of course the package is for Atmel's own eval board, but it will get you started.
http://sam7stuff.blogspot.com/
I use either of the codesourcery lite versions. But I have no use for the gcc library nor a C library, I just need a compiler.
In the gcc 3 days newlib was great, modify two files worth of system support (simple open, close, read, putc type stuff) and you could compile just about anything, but with gcc 4.x you cannot even go back and cross compile gcc 3.x, you have to install an old linux distro in a virtual machine.
To get the gcc library yes you probably want to use the eabi version not the version with linux gnueabi in the file names.
You might also consider llvm (if you dont need a C library, and you will still need binutils), hmm, I wonder if newlib compiles with llvm.
I prefer to avoid getting trapped in sandboxes, learn the tools and how to manipulate the linker, etc to build your binaries.
As good developers we keep our code as standard compliant as possible to help in porting between platforms. But what tools are available that help us build the code in a uniform way across multiple platforms.
*nix family has make but Windows needs nmake.
I have read about SCons but never used it in anger. What is your favorite build tool, why do you find it effective and are there any limitations (i.e. platforms with bad support etc).
Cross platform IDEs as well.
cmake for c/c++ environments is good. http://www.cmake.org/
I personally use ant, rake, and maven2. I have used ant the most and find it great for several reasons:
Because it is java it works on lots of platforms (without changing any scripts)
The build files are written in XML and fairly easy to write
There are lots of 3rd party extensions available for it and it is easy to write plugins for
we do extreme cross development, and our code runs on linux, windows ce, windows 2K, nucleus and uCOS-II.
since each environment uses different 'make' methodology (out nucleus customer, for example, require us to compile via code-warrior GUI).
i used ANT combined with perl for about 2 years, but this lead the build script to total non-maintainability.
now we moved to use python, which increase the maintainability of the scripts.
bottom line, i did not find a ready-made tool, and had to build my own. maybe, when i have some time (2017 ?) i will pack my scripts and distribute them ....
If you're in the Java world, there are quite a few tools which are cross-platform. Apache Ant and Maven are both build tools which will run on any platform which has Java available for it.
Cruise Control (continuous integration tool) also works on Windows and Linux (it's written in Java as well).
I haven't had any real issues with the core tools, the only problems I've sometimes had have come from things external to the build process, i.e. publishing artifacts - this will vary between systems so I've found there's no single way of setting it up.
For C/C++ development, I've found that bakefile works well. The fairly large wxWidgets project, a cross-platform cross-platform utility and UI library, uses it for their build file generation.
Bakefile is cross-platform, cross-compiler native makefiles generator. It takes compiler-independent description of build tasks as input and generates native makefile (autoconf's Makefile.in, Visual C++ project, bcc makefile etc.).
Bakefile's task is to generate native makefiles, so that people can keep using their favorite tools. There are other cross-platform make solutions, but they either aren't native and require the user to use unfamiliar tools (Boost.Build) or they are too limited (qmake).
You can use gmake on Windows as well with cygwin/minGW or build your windows stuff on Linux.
http://cdtdoug.blogspot.com/2009/05/mingw-cross-for-linux.html
There are tools like Opus Make or MKS Toolkit that offers multiplatform and support. If you have an existing codebase of make script, could be easier migrate to one of there. I suspect you may hunt for similar tools in advertising of DDJ magazine.
We've been running a Java environment for Linux, Windows and the Mac for the last 18 months.
Maven 2 drives our builds, it's pretty easy to get things consistent here. Where M2 plugins don't dare to tread, we use small Ant scripts.
IDE-wise we're using Eclipse & IDEA - both, of course, multi-platform.
Testing - JUnit, Fitnesse, Fest - all nicely multi-platform.
Release scripts are written in Ruby. There's a bit more trouble with Windows here, but a function to convert paths as necessary generally does the trick.
TeamCity does CI. We've actually migrated this from Windows to Linux and encountered no errors at all, very nice package.
We did use GWT for a while and this did cause us large amounts of pain. Be careful if you swing that way.