[fpc-devel] Status of ESP8266 embedded target

[Christo Crause]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2022 at 7:29 AM Travis Siegel <tsiegel at softcon.com> wrote:

> On 10/4/2022 1:07 AM, Christo Crause wrote:
>
> On Tue, 4 Oct 2022, 01:15 Travis Siegel via fpc-devel, <
> fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>> Does this process use gcc to do the compile, instead of fpc directly? If
>> it does, I will dig into making it compatible with Parallax's line of
>> propeller boards, since it now supports GCC to generate code for the
>> propeller 1 and 2 boards.  Being able to program these in pascal would
>> be wonderful.  Parallax has a series of SBC products, including the
>> basic stamp, a java stamp, (no longer produced), and as mentioned, the
>> propeller boards.  They also have several robot packages that can be
>> programmed via the propeller or basic stamps, so if the esp board code
>> does work, and it calls gcc for it's work, I'll certainly be interested
>> in tackling making it work with the propeller boards, I think that could
>> help some folks start using those boards.
>>
>
> The compiler typically generates target CPU specific assembler code, which
> requires an external assembler and linker to generate the executable code.
> I don't know much about the Parallax controllers, but it appears to be a
> distinct architecture (not ARM or MIPS for example) not yet supported by
> FPC, so would require a new compiler backend AFAIU.
>
>
> Yeah, it's a custom board, but it has 8 cores, which makes multitasking
> real simple.  They call them cogs, and you can spin up another cog at any
> time.  It also uses a language called spin (their version of assembly), so
> I guess it could be supported, but how much work is adding a whole new
> architecture to FPC?
>

For someone who is familiar with the compiler design, adding a new
architecture would be easy but would probably still take a few weeks worth
of effort.  This assumes existing knowledge of the low level functioning of
the target.  I have patched a few bugs in the past, but it took me many
days to figure out how seemingly simple functionality integrated into the
overall compiler design.  It would probably be worthwhile to get a compiler
developer interested in this exercise from the start to help speed up the
effort.
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