[fpc-devel] Re: FPC Arm options

[Robert Reimiller]

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 08:00:08 -0700, peter green <plugwash at bircd.org> wrote:
> dunno but from what i can gather softfloat code is generally faster than  
> os
> level emulation because of the costs of trapping cpu exceptions in the  
> os.

That's what I have heard too. I suppose if there is already an emulation  
software
library that would be preferable.

I think though I'm screwed as far as the endian issue is concerned. I just  
checked
out the source using svn and found the line: "            endian       :  
endian_little;"
for the Arm-Linux target definition. I kind of doubt that changing that to  
endian_big and
recompiling will work

It turns out that Arcom's PXA255 board runs in little endian mode,  
although it only
has USB 1.1 which would impact the disk performance (we have to use a USB  
to IDE adaptor).
The Arcom linux development software actually comes with either  
arm-linux-xxx (such as arm-linux-gcc)
or armbe-linux-xxx (for big endian) programs. I could use GCC, but I don't  
have any
real interest in downgrading 35000 lines of Pascal into C.

Actually I wish I could avoide the whole ARM/Linux thing altogether and  
find a low-power
586 class board with an OS that emulates Win32 so I could just make a  
console application in
Delphi and run on it. Oh well.