[fpc-devel] FPC for Coldfire and 68K derivatives

[Mike Salish]

It was interesting to see renewed activity in the compiler for the 68K 
architecture. I've been using another old compiler, written in Pascal, 
for embedded development for many years and been wanting to give FPC a 
try. My existing compiler emits assembler for the 68K and CPU32 but 
lacks the features that FPC can provide.

I have been able to compile my existing compiler using FPC on a PC and 
find that the resulting code is about 10% bigger (and slower) than the 
same program compiled in Delphi. The good news is that when the 
FPC-compiled old Pascal compiler is used to compile a big (20KLOC) 
Pascal embedded program it produces exactly the same output. So as far 
as I am concerned this makes the FPC a very viable tool. All that is 
missing is the 68K code generator and RTL and... a few more bits.

The work that has been done to be able to compile 68000/020..040 code is 
admirable for completeness but of little practical value since it is 
difficult to find hardware. At the moment the 68K versions still in 
production are all for control applications in embedded systems. These 
chips use the CPU32 and more recently the MCF5xxxx Coldfire 
architecture. For MCF there are some sources of small and cheap demo 
boards (netgear, Arcturus  I know of). IMO Coldfire is the only viable 
path for future development that can see any practical use. And I think 
MCF code should run on the CPU32 as well even though it will not use all 
the addressing modes of the CPU32.

I've downloaded the compiler sources and would ask that anyone who can 
provide the build strings and other tricks they have used to build a 
cross-compiler targeting the 68K/CF point me in the right direction. 
I've got the Build FAQ and Programmers Manual so I'm reading a lot.

I would like to build up a tool set that will produce assembler so that 
it can be analyzed for correctness before I try to run it on real 
hardware. I'm working in XP with Mingw, can work in OsX easily and in 
Linux with more effort (don't have a machine setup for Linux now). For 
me I have embedded emulator tools that work in XP so that would be my 
preferred path.

Thanks in advance for the assistance. Mike Salish