FAQ:General

I have downloaded everything, what do I do now?

It is suggested to start with a simple example. The GNU Development Chain comes alone and does not have any example packaged with it.

However, you can get the GNU Embedded Libraries which contain a number of utility libraries and several examples. GEL is available at:

[http://gel.sourceforge.net]

You can also compile this small program, which does nothing useful (just to show out the procedure):

unsigned short fact(unsigned short a)
{
  if (a)
    return a * fact (a - 1);
  else
    return 1;
}
int main()
{
  return fact (5) - fact (4);
}

You must compile it with the following command:

  m6811-elf-gcc -o prog.elf prog.c -mshort -g -Os

And you can execute or debug it with the GNU Debugger as follows:

  m6811-elf-gdb prog.elf
  <i>(gdb)</i> target sim
  <i>(gdb)</i> load
  <i>(gdb)</i> b main
  <i>(gdb)</i> run
  <i>(gdb)</i> step
  ...

Is S19 format supported?

Yes.

S19 and Intel Hex records are supported for many many years by the GNU Binutils. They are not the native format because they do not provide all the information that a linker and a debugger need (symbols, relocation, debug information).

It is recommended to let the GNU linker generate the default ELF file and use m6811-elf-objcopy to convert ELF into S19. The ELF file is required by the GNU debugger as it contains the symbolic debug information. The GNU Binutils also provide others tools (nm, size, readelf, objdump) that analyze and can give useful information about a binary program. Most of this information loast when the ELF file is translated in S19.

Why is release 2.x based on gcc 3.0.4 ?

Releases 2.0, 2.1, 2.1.1 and 2.2 are based on the GNU compiler 3.0.4 even though more recent version of the compiler exist (such as 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3). This is because the Release 2.x are intensively validated and the 3.0.4 compiler has been fixed to ensure correct code generation. It took me arround 6 months of work to achieve this.

The 3.1 and 3.2 have several problems that were not yet identified and that require a *lot* of time to fix and solve. Getting the same stability with 3.1 or 3.2 would have required another 6 months of work for me (in my spare time).

Finaly, I prefer to distribute a stable and robust version in which you can trust rather than a more recent compiler less tested and with known generation problems.

Release 3.0 will probably be based on the GNU compiler 3.3 as recent validation with it (on 28 July, 2003) showed good results.