[fpc-devel] Re: FPC for microcontrollers

[Jonas Maebe]

On 15 Aug 2006, at 14:21, Alexander Todorov wrote:

> AFAIK gcc can compile code for some models microcontrollers(cpus for
> embeded devices).

GCC, like FPC, can compile code for any cpu it has a code generator for.

> I am not specialist in this area but know people who write software
> for custom made devices using GCC and C instead of writing in some
> assembler language.

That means they made a custom code generator (and possibly a custom  
libc) for their platform.

> The question is do we need/do we want support for this feature in FPC?

This is not a particular feature which can be added. For every  
different microcontroller you want to support, you have to create a  
code generator (or at least adapt an existing one in case it's a  
variant of a particular cpu).

I think the actual question is: are there people interested in  
writing a code generator for the microcontroller you want to use, or  
something like that. Generic "microcontroller support" would be  
limited to a description of which RTL parts you minimally need to  
create a working FPC environment, and possibly some defines in the  
RTL which strip out things which are not very useful in embedded  
environments.

> This can be used for FPC advocacy as well.

Few if any features are ever implemented because it "helps advocacy".  
They are added because the people who added them thought they were  
useful or interesting to have.


Jonas