[fpc-devel] Is target mips-embedded possible / planned?

[Michael Ring]

Am 14.05.13 08:47, schrieb Michael Schnell:
> On 05/13/2013 08:07 PM, Michael Ring wrote:
>> ... pic32mx controllers ...
>
> BTW.:
> AFAIK, the PIC controllers (16 and 32 Bit) use a propriety debug 
> interface to be accessed by "PICKit" an "ICD-3" adapters. They do use 
> a gnu based  (though propriety made, and payed) C-compiler and linker 
> . AFAI understand they use gdb under the hood and as there is the 
> ("NETBeans" based "MPLab-X" IDE that runs as well on Windows as on 
> Linux, it should be possible to use the Lazarus to debug a PIC32 
> device, if you can set up the Lazarus-gdb-interface appropriately

I did not yet invest much time in finding out if PICKit supports a 
GDBServer, but pic32mx chips do support jtag based debugging/flashing 
and openocd has pic32mx support. (see 
http://www.microchip.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=346142, implementation started 
in 2008)


> .
>
> Do you plan for allowing PIC32 development using Lazarus ? I suppose 
> for that you not only need the gdb interface, but also a way to 
> integrate MPLab-X originated library files to be integrated in the RTL 
> to have the processor even start running. )
For me my gdb-interface to lazarus still has some rough edges, at the 
moment I mainly use gdb --tui or ddd for debugging low level (for 
cortex-m0) until I have figured out in more detail which rough edges I 
still have to cover in the lazarus interface.
When this is done you can use Lazarus for development, I do my coding 
already in Lazarus, and the debugging if I am on a cortex-m3 chip and do 
not need to go too deep into the implementation.

About MPlab Libs: I like to do things low-level so I prefer to implement 
my own objects for gpio and spi,.. as I need them.

Using the pre-build libs might be a lot easier but I am doing this for 
fun, my personal goal is not complete coverage of all aspects of a 
microcontroller but instead I want to be able to use a pic32, a 
cortex-m0 or cortex-m3 based on my hobby project restrictions, for 
example lqfp chips are hard to solder (at least for me, I am getting old 
;-) ) and you need to take a lot of care when creating PCB's so I prefer 
either LPC-81x for very small projects that need only few lines of code 
and in future I would like to use pic32mx chips in soic or tqfp 
packages, they have roughly the same features as the cortex-m0/3 chips 
but are available in a lot of different packages.

For Cortex-M3 (which I currently use for main development) I use the 
excellent easy-mx pro v7 board from micro-e, but the translation to 
self-etched boards is difficult because those both nxp and stm only have 
lqfp for their cortex-m3 chips.
>
> And/or do you plan to allow for MPLab-X projects to integrate fpc 
> generated units ?
>

Definitely no, sorry  ;-)

> Thanks,
> -Michael
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