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Unread 23-03-2010, 08:14
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Re: Driver station coding and other

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas Clark View Post
The compiler doesn't support anything besides Windows, and some of us prefer Linux. The IDE I don't care about (I never use IDEs, just makefiles), but FIRST is limiting users' experiences by limiting who can program and on what operating system. IMHO, they should provide a build of the WPI library and compiler for Linux.
The WPI library would be the same if built on linux because the target is still the robot.

Building a cross environment on Linux would require
- build a ppc cross compiler for x86 linux
- integrate and test compiler in eclipse
- test the method for downloading the code to robot
- support all of the above for all the users

versus
- taking the existing wind river environment and deploy

When you consider that supporting the environment on windows is taking
all of the current volunteer time, you can see why adding another platform of
limited utility to a small number of users is not a priority.

If you can convince a small group of robo linux enthusiasts to build the
environment, you could grow support for this endeavor.