RE: [avr-gcc-list] crosstool-NG

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden
> [mailto:address@hidden On
> Behalf Of Trevor Woerner
> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 12:09 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [avr-gcc-list] crosstool-NG
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to this project (avr-gcc) but have been using crosstool-NG for
> a while to build the various cross development tools I've needed for
> development work on various platforms. I see that CT-NG already has
> support for the avr32 tools and thought it would be an interesting
> project to add avr-gcc support (hopefully the people on the CT-NG side
> will be interested as well).

Sorry for my ignorance, but can you provide a link to crosstool-NG? I think I'm 
familiar with what you're referring to. I remember talking to the author of the 
crosstool scripts several years ago.

> If CT-NG had the necessary support, building a toolchain for the avr
> on Linux (sorry, I don't have experience building outside of Linux)
> would simply be a matter of:
> 1) downloading, building, and installing CT-NG (very small and quick
> process)
> 2) moving to a work-area and performing "ct-ng avr-unknown-none"
> 3) optionally tweaking the configuration with "ct-ng menuconfig"
> 4) then invoking "ct-ng build" for the build and install
> 
> You then add the install location + "/bin" to your $PATH and you're
> ready to build.

Certainly, easy to use build scripts for Linux users is always good.

 
> My apologies if this isn't the case, but it appears to me (being new)
> that the avr-gcc landscape is a bit fractured:
> 1) avr-gcc source from the GCC project
> 2) Bingo600's scripts + patches from the avrfreaks forum
> 3) Omar's script + patches from the avrfreaks forum
> 4) Arduino IDE download
> 5) WinAVR toolchain (which I believe uses avr-gcc?)
> 6) AVR Studio (which also uses the avr-gcc tools?)
> 7) patches from atmel.no
> (others?)
> 
> To be honest I'm not even sure which is the one I should be looking
> at, they all seem to have their own pros and cons.

It's been a bit fractured just within the last few months. Joerg Wunsch, who is 
the maintainer of the toolchain distro on FreeBSD, and I have always 
coordinated the patch sets so that WinAVR and the FreeBSD toolchain distro 
would be identical. Bingo has also cooperated with us in helping to provide the 
same set for Linux.

In the last year, I've been unsure if there was a reason for WinAVR to continue 
what with the "AVR Toolchain" on the Atmel website. So I haven't been keeping 
it up to date recently. I'm beginning to reconsider starting it back up again.

 
> The latest versions of the core tools are:
> binutils: 2.21
> gcc: 4.5.2
> avr-libc: 1.7.1
> 
> The various build instructions from above target different versions of
> each.
> 
> 1) The GCC project (obviously) has the latest version of gcc, but
> doesn't include many bugfixes and updates to support newer chips

That is correct. But this is slowly changing.

 
> 2) Bingo600's scripts appear to be the best so far (in terms of
> including bugfixes and supporting latest chips) but is based on
> gcc-4.3.4 and includes older versions of avr-libc and binutils. I have
> studied the gcc bugfixes and patches and have determined that of the
> group of 14 patches 5 have been fully applied to the latest gcc code,
> 3 partially, and 6 not at all.
> 
> 3) Omar's scripts build the latest of everything but (apparently)
> don't have some of the bug fixes and support for the latest chips
> (i.e. it just uses the gcc-4.5.2 source with small modifications so it
> and avr-libc build correctly).
> 
> 4,5,6,7) I have no idea what state these tools are in but glossing the
> avrfreaks forum suggests the support in WinAVR is quite good
> 
> I realise, ironically, that I'm proposing yet another fracture. But,
> theoretially, if I knew from where to get all the latest patches and
> supported all the latest tools then hopefully some of the other
> projects might be interested in folding together into this one?
> Secondly, CT-NG becomes (I think)  a good place to accumulate all the
> various patches. There's no reason why, for example, both Bingo600's
> and Omar's patches couldn't both be included in the CT-NG system such
> that you could use CT-NG to build either or both of those toolchains.

Thanks for considering joining forces. It's always better than yet another 
project/fork. 

If Bingo and Omar are willing, and are able, to work with this CT-NG project, 
and we can make it dead simple for the casual user to use, then it sounds like 
a good idea from what I can tell so far.

WinAVR has always had the patches available in its revision control system on 
SourceForge. And it provides anonymous access, of course.

Eric Weddington