Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

The project page for picloader and pycloader are at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ifi-picloader/.

All the Eclipse stuff I started integrated, centralizing, and releasing under FIRSTclipse.

There are open source compilers available for the PIC18F. The only reason we can't use these is IFI's libraries. I don't know how many linkers can use libraries generated by mcc18.

As for a central location, I think the most that is needed is that every project have a versioning system and we have a central mailing list for the projects to coordinate. There's so many projects because of the diverse implementations, languages, and other requirements.

At this point, I think what would be most useful would be if the programmers for the various projects wrote their code in such a way that the "back end" could easily be lifted and used elsewhere.

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

The C18 complier appears to generate Microsoft PE-COFF formatted library files (quickly looking at FRC_library_8722.lib). This format is fairly well documented at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...re/PECOFF.mspx (click through its a Word document).

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

The only possible PIC18F compiler I could find was sdcc, in which PIC18F support is not yet complete. I think it would be good to try to help contribute to this project (if possible), since most of the building blocks we need are already in place. I could make a modified version of gplink to be able to link to PE-COFF fairly easily since the specification is open.

Thanks for the links to those tools, Astronouth. As for writing suitable modular backends, that's definitely a great point. The command-line/GUI loader I've been working on has a completely modular interface, which can be statically linked against for other projects requiring similar interfaces.

Within the next week or so I could have subversion repos and a mailing list available to start, although it might be better to see if FIRST is open to this. They might be able to lend us a server and a subdomain, or just a subdomain for a server we set up (probably better for us).

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

I am fully in support of all of this. I will do whatever I can to help you. Open source alternatives are necessary!

One thing that we really cannot get around, however, is MCC. MCC is NOT free software. Microchip will almost certainly not make an open source alternative (or even a unix or linux alternative) to MCC. It will certainly not do open source because they're making money off of it and it's really basically their only source of income. As for a linux or unix non-open source alternative, I don't know, but I would be willing to help you in any way I can!

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

I agree that Free and Open Source Software should be an important part of the FIRST universe. It fits.

That said, they are probably leery of turning off their current corporate sponsors. They really should not be. Any company that is not willing to play nice with other systems should be shunned. But they probably are.

Anyhow, running mcc18 under wine has not given us any major problems. It is certainly better than mplab on windows.

Maybe a better approach to getting FOSS in to FIRST would be to help them out. We could send out copies of The Open CD to all the teams:
http://www.theopencd.org/

That could make a great intro to Free.

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

I doubt that. Microchip is in the business of selling embedded processors. Not in selling compilers. They do release the entire instruction set for free. There is nothing preventing someone else from creating their own compiler.

Re: Open-Source FIRST
 

Thanks for those! I'd like to help in any way I can, let's get this project off of the ground! I like to use PCLinuxOS and Gentoo Linux but I don't have enough money for Windows, and even if I did I wouldnt use it on this old crappy computer. It would definitely die trying to use XP or 2000, and all versions before those are pretty much unusable for me.

So how can we help them? I look forward to the day where I can use a *nix environment for this without (possibly) even using WINE (although I already have it installed).