OpenEuphoria

1. Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 06, 2010
• 2168 views

i've been doing alot of programming on ARM devices (and mips and blackfin and...) recently and would really love to be able to use Euphoria on them, currently i'm using bash and lua so i wondered if anyone has been looking at porting the x86 assembler in the euphoria interpreter/compiler to other chips or if noone has, any suggestions on where to start doing it myself? :)

thnx

3. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 07, 2010
• 2081 views

RIght now Euphoria makes a lot of sizeof(void*)==sizeof(int)==sizeof(long)==4 assumptions. This is the biggest hurdle for anyone trying to port.

There is a handful of x86 assembly used in be_callc.c but this is fairly trivial assembly so anyone who knows ARM assemby could replace it easily. Failing this, a pure C version of be_callc.c exists and is used by the msvc40 branch.

I am not sure about other places. be_tasks.c no longer uses x86 assembly iiuc, but the pthreads library, so it should work ok. be_execute.c has some complex assembly hacks for the big switch statement, but those are Watcom specific. The gcc version uses a builtin gcc feature that should be portable (as in, it should just work) on the ARM port of gcc.

5. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 08, 2010
• 2059 views

As of right now there are only two lines of assembly used for the gcc version, in be_callc.c

7. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by forte Jan 12, 2010
• 1953 views

I've also tried to cross compile eu3 for my motolora linux phone.

In the first trial it gave out an error saying that there are 'bad instructions' in the file be_callc.c

So I just changed those lines, from :

// RH Linux - ListFilter 
#define push() asm("pushl -28(%ebp)") 
#define  pop() asm( "addl -32(%ebp), %esp") 

to

// RH Linux - ListFilter 
#define push() //asm("pushl -28(%ebp)") 
#define  pop() //asm( "addl -32(%ebp), %esp") 

Then the compilation was successful. The interpreter worked fine.

However, when I tried to run some scripts such as callc.exu or mylib.exu in the demo/linux directory, it failed. It seemed that I cannot pass parameters to the external C functions.

I think the problem was due to the changes above. Anyone can tell me how to correct the 'bad instructions' with the appropriate ARM assembly code?

Thx in advance.

9. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by forte Jan 12, 2010
• 1943 views

I think the phone uses ARM processor because the cross compiler I used is arm-none-linux-gnueabi-*

By the way, thanks for the file, but may I ask where I can find the be_runtime.h required by the c source code? Is it for eu3 or eu4?

11. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by forte Jan 12, 2010
• 2011 views

Thanks, I've just tried this with eu3. The interpreter can now run some of the scripts correctly (mylib.exu), though the string copy test, sin test and printf test (of callc.exu) failed. I will try it out for eu4 later.

13. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 12, 2010
• 1925 views

well for the idea to comment them out anyway :)

15. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 12, 2010
• 1938 views

my main problem with using the scratchbox crosscompile environment is the need for a running interpreter to build euphoria (i'm working on eu40, well actually i'm working on console-tools and kbd and fonts at the moment but in between i'm fiddiling with eu40). once i resetup buildroot and firmwarelinux i started to get a bit further along in the process although not got a working binary yet. but i'll grab the non-assembler version of the file and see if i get any further (this is all probably going to be an exercise in futility in the end though other than to say it works as the device i'm building for has very little ram (32meg) and only 8meg flash+2gig SD Card although i am hoping to use the practice for other devices with "exotic" cpu's and hopefully more ram and flash)

17. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 12, 2010
• 1935 views

The answer is to pre-translate the euphoria source code on an x86 box first, then move the entire source over to the ARM system to finish the compile.

If you are crosscompiling to ARM and the host system is x86, then you shouldn't have any problems just using an x86 binary for the translation steps.

I don't know what it takes to compile Eu .. but 4.0 should run in that environment, no problems..

19. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 12, 2010
• 1933 views

The dependencies are set up so that if one of the .o files for the translated source is missing, the entire translation process is rerun.

What you need to do is to run the translation step alone, and not compile any .o files until after you have moved it to the ARM box.

Also, when you do the copying, make sure it is with a tool that preserves timestamps. If the timestamps are not preserved, this can confuse make and cause it to unnecessarily rerun steps for dependencies (such as the translator).

21. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by forte Jan 14, 2010
• 1869 views

Actually, I don't know much about it. :p I just downloaded the un-official cross compiler toolchain and the SDK from a forum and followed the tutorials and instructions there to develop/cross compile apps for the phone.

23. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 14, 2010
• 1832 views

We had an issue with some Unixes not defining strlcat() or strlcpy(). Since uClib seems to define them, just remove the "ELINUX" in the ifdef section for strlcat/strlcpy in alloc.h and in be_alloc.c

If you want, you can just comment out the entire sections in be_alloc.c and alloc.h

The without-euphoria option is the opposite - it assumes the translation is already done and tries to do the remaining tests - the actual building of C source to final binary.

You need to do a 'make source' and then copy the tree over.

25. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 14, 2010
• 1840 views

Like I said, 4.0 removed the assembly code in be_task.c

I am not sure what the level of pthreads support in uClib is, so I don't know if you gain anything by tring to port the 4.0 be_task.c to 3.1.1

If you are trying to port 4.0 to ARM then your version of 4.0 is too old and you should get a newer source. But unless pthreads works on uClib, you still won't get tasks to run.

27. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 14, 2010
• 1850 views

ok apart from overheating my computer and thus having to take a break while it cooled down :) using the trunk.tar.gz from the svn completed successfully with eu.a and 3 eu? executables generated. i still can't get them to open any files but now we are getting somewhere :)

29. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 15, 2010
• 1786 views

forte is the one with the phone, i think he said motorola or samsung but i'm too lazy to scroll up and check :)

i'm currently targetting the arm cpu (pxa270) in the ZipitZ2 (http://zipitwireless.com Noisy web page with lots of teenager bubblegum pop last time i forgot to turn off my speakers before going there and http://linux.zipitwireless.com ) running the /stock/ os rather than the openembedded/debian ports although they'd probably be running by now as they are glibc rather than uclibc

my current plans are to get a quick and dirty port that sort of runs and then use that as a bootstrap to run the build process in an emulated system (qemu) using either scratchbox or firmwarelinux as that will give the easiest build process for the unnitiated in the dark arts of cross compiling (it will save on the virgin sacrifices (and my sanity) if i stuck with buildroot too, although i do plan to go back to working with buildroot if the problems don't turn out to be uclibc related as that will enable ports to processors not supported by qemu)

i will certainly send you any modifications (can't talk for forte though) i have to do to get it running on an non-x86 systems. currently the only changes i've had to make to get a semi-working binary have been to replace be_callc.c with be_callc_conly.c, change the internally defined strlcat/cpy to strlcat_eu/strlcpy_eu and change all of the relevant calls to their _eu suffixed versions and use make source and copy the whole tree over to the emulated environment (i'm now working with the trunk.tar.gz that was available on the 14/1/10 and should probably stick with that for a couple of days at least).

i'm not sure why i'm getting the can't open error running eui/c though probably a subtle difference between uclibc and glibc. i have had a cursory look through all the code and i can't see why it would be failing but i'll be having another look today.

i have to take things a bit slower as my computer has been overheating alot in the last 24 hours, probably not too keen on running 3 parallel builds in 4 virtual machines while listening to the bbc and downloading a few other bits and pieces

31. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 15, 2010
• 1738 views

yup this laptop needs a good ol' clean. i haven't cleaned it's guts since we moved last year. and i really should get around to it in the next day or so but that means going to radioshack and buying some canned air and a few other bits and pieces while i'm there and i'm brasic this week.

33. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 16, 2010
• 1688 views

also thought of another define that should probably be in the Makefile as there are now really 3 main choices in the glibc arena, uclibc,glibc and eglibc and it does look like at least on my setup (uclibc) that i have to comment out a few things that euphoria is providing as they are included in my libs already, i should go through everything and see what is where but a few defines in the makefiles wouldn't go amiss

Russell

35. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 17, 2010
• 1659 views

When will you make the source for all of this available?

37. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 17, 2010
• 1615 views

i was going to put my notes up on the wiki but i can't get it to edit any pages as it doesn;t seem to think i'm logged in. so i'll write them up and put them up somewhere and link to them

39. Re: Euphoria on ARM (and other processors)

• Posted by rkdavis Jan 21, 2010
• 1537 views

got side tracked for a couple of days trying to help a few people setting up their zipits but i'll get to writing up what i have so far in the next day or so. it definatly looks like glibc/eglibc systems will work pretty much out of the box no matter what processor they use (arm, mips....) but uclibc ones are going to be a PITA