[fpc-devel] Freepascal in microcontrollers

[Daniël Mantione]

Op Thu, 28 Feb 2008, schreef Michael Schnell:

>
>> Of course the compiler should be internally consistent. A record written on 
>> i.e. Windows should be readable on i.e. Linux. Only if {$packrecords C}
>> is used, we pack records according to ABI, as to interface with the OS.
>
> Are any bitpacked structures used in the API of any OS ?

Probably not, but the "OS" should be interpreted broadly here, any C 
library can expose bitpacked structures, therefore they can be 
standardized in ABIs.

> If hardware access is an issue: how should endianess be handled ? The 
> compiler does know about the endianess of the processor, but it does not know 
> about what endianess the user needs in the hardware. Thus it would be 
> necessary to define it via a kind of compiler option.

The compiler can only care about processor endianness. Having a known 
binary structure is something different as being usable for hardware 
access.

Daniël