Using different GCC to build Linux vs Linux Apps - c

This question may seem weird for some gurus out there, but I'm a little perplexed.
Basically what I want to do is to evaluate different tool chain for developing applications on embedded Linux. Say I have my Linux built using Yocto Project, which cross-compiles GCC from scratch can provide it as a cross toolchain for apps developers.
But if I want to try out different toolchains fro this point, say Sourcery CodeBench or a toolchain generated using BuildRoot, is it possible to build a applications using these toolchains and still run them on the Yocto-generated Linux? I'd imagine this is doable is built statically. But if we then want to link dynamically, it's simply a matter of copying over libc?
Thanks for the help. Sorry if question is ambiguous.

Related

Organizing a pure-C project so it can be built using GUI tools on different platforms

I am planning to start updating some old-ish C code to C99, hosted publicly on GitHub. The code compiles without a single change on Linux, macOS and Windows.
To ease poking about in the code, on my Mac I used an Xcode project file to organize it. I believe other users might find this useful too, and on .Net as well.
So, my question is purely organizational - does anyone out there have a canonical example of how to arrange such a project physically? That is, a widely used example that has Mac, Win and Linux builds using platform specific project files and make/make config
I know can just put the project files in subfolders, but I want to be sure that if there is a "standard" way to do this that I use it too.

Cross Compilation for C applications using Eclipse

I'm developing a java application which uses native code with JNI, so I developped a C shared library using Eclipse with the CDT plugin on Linux Redhat. Everything works fine since I can launch my java application and call the native methods without any problem. But my problem is, I need to compile my code on every platform (Linux, Windows, x86/x64). It's not a problem to get the libXXX.so file but I also need a .dll to run on Windows, except I can't just compile my code on it, I need a way to do that locally on Linux with Eclipse. So I am looking for some simple solutions to do that locally with Eclipse using cross compilation.
I've made some researches but I can't find a real tutorial to explain how to do that, each time people say to compile on the specified platform. So if someone could help me with this that would be great.
My configuration is : Linux RedHat, Eclipse Juno, CDT plugin 8.1
You need a Linux -> Windows cross compiler. The MinGW tools would do the job, but, last I checked, they only provide binary downloads to run on Windows (i.e. not a cross-compiler). There are some (old) instructions for building your own here.
The CodeBench compiler is probably exactly what you want, but it's not free (there is a free trial though). It's basically a professional build of the MinGW tools, and comes with it's own customized Eclipse so there's no fiddling about needed in that department.
A quick google also comes up with these tools on sourceforge, but I've not tried them.

which development software should be used for VLC on mac?

i want to do some modification and development for VLC. i download its source code, vlc-1.1.5. and it is written by C. so usually which development environment should i use, xcode or some others?
thx...
I thought VLC was developed in Qt. Do you see the class names starting with Q? In case it is developed in Qt, Qt Creator or KDevelop would be a good choice of development environment.
The VideoLAN folks provide a wiki page with information about compiling their source on multiple platforms. The page relevant to OS X is here: http://wiki.videolan.org/OSXCompile
Compiling VLC media player on Mac OS X is different from normal linux compiling and OS X compiling. We do not use Xcode, but a simple ./configure and then make isn't enough either.
The page provides a step-by-step guide to setting up a machine running either OS X 10.5 or 10.6.
Any editor of choice should suffice. Looking at the code, it seems that VLC uses Unix-style building (autotools, make, etc). On Win32, it uses MinGW, so plain old gcc and make is probably used on OSX as well.

IDE for embedded development

I do a lot of embedded development work in C. I'm looking for an IDE that can give me the same kind of features as Eclipse or Visual Studio. In the past I've used Vim, but I'm just not happy with the amount of work it is to use. Right now I'm trying to use Eclipse, but I can't get it to tag my code correctly. I also have access to Visual Studio and I might be able to get a SlickEdit license.
Can anyone recommend an editor? I'm looking for something that has
Some type of code completion
SVN support
Indexing/tagging of variable, function names etc
Support for interpreting code that may be #ifed out
Third party compiler support
Is there a way to generate tags on the code without having a make file or building the code with gcc?
I think you are going in the right direction (with Eclipse).
I think your question is why you can't tag you code,
however I know that Eclipse supports ctags (so it is not in any way impossible).
Eclipse is used as the basis for Embedded development IDEs from QNX Software Systems (who are also the primary contributors to the CDT), WindRiver, Mentor Graphic, and others, so it has some weight behind it. Green-Hills have an Eclipse plug-in for their toolchain.
Getting a seamless development environment from integrating your own tools is hard work however, but more viable than with other Text Editors because of the open plug-in architecture. It depends on the level of integration you want. Edit and build are straight-forward in most editors. Getting all of, edit, build, build/dependency-management (makefile generation), version control, source browsing and remote source level debug, is a bit of a task outside of an off-the-shelf suite from someone like one of the above vendors.
Many of the proprietary non-Eclipse based IDE's from the likes of Keil or IAR are looking a little old fashioned, and are seldom satisfactory as editors, although they often offer a lot of low level functionality in terms of target hardware and RTOS awareness and simulation.
I widely used Code::Blocks
code::blocks
This thing is so amazing,
If you have any binutils arm-elf, avr-elf, VC, mingw, installed You could use whatever you want, just chose toolset in properties of project, add some libraries etc...
I've used to add other tools like flash2000 for LPC processors, objdump etc. as an external command.
There are plenty of tools for this IDE which makes your cross compilation faster & easier.
And it's much better (read faster, smaller) than Eclipse + CDT and other stuff.
http://mbeddr.com/
Just released an IDE for embedded systems
I think if the question is about the choice of IDE, then the answer is Eclipse with CDT. Seasoned guys like the author of "TDD with Embedded C", James Grenning likes and uses it. See appendix of the mentioned book for more.
I have been working on embedded products for quite some time, mostly I use emacs with ctags (etags) and cscope. I have, of late, started using SlickEdit, it works just fine. However, I personally recommend you to get familiar with Vim/Emacs whatever editor you feel comfortable. The best thing about emacs/vim is that the flexibility to extend the functionality through plugin / whatever you call it. There are lot of third party plugins available to extend these editors. Of course, you need to invest some time to get started.
I'm currently using IAR's Workbench which is nice enough. I've used Eclipse with the CDT plug-in before (and probably will again at some point) and its code navigation worked just fine. I don't recall having to futz around too much to get it to index the code, but I was using GCC (which might be a factor) and I do recall having to restart Eclipse and/or manually tell it to reindex at times when it would seem to have some trouble navigating.
However, even though IAR's Workbench works well enough for most things, when I really want to have nice code navigation at my fingertips, I just load up Visual Studio with a makefile project that includes the source tree. The makefile commands simply call out to IAR's command line utilities to perform the build. This works fantastically well except for the debugging - I have to go to IAR Workbench for that. And when I'm in a debugging mode it's just easier to stay in IAR. But if I'm analyzing or cutting code, I'll move to VS for that.
So basically, you can generally use whatever IDE you prefer for much of your development as long as your toolchain for the target provides for being driven by the command line.
I've used Microscope (Vex Platform), EVC++, and the Maemo compilers+Nano for embedded programming. Most of the other tools you request are often found outside the IDE.
However, Netbeans can be configured to compile non-Java code. Its not just not as convenient. If you are developping with C++ you might be able to change the compiler used and you would be able to use the C++ plugin with ease.
Unless you're developing on the device, why not just use the IDE you usually use? You're gonna be cross-compiling anyway.
I used vim especially working with Linux/unix systems with cscope (for source cross-reference). Vim is nifty with latest versions supporting code-completion. Lot of plugins available.
Emacs is a power-horse, lot of customizing support.It support CVS/Clearcase AFAIK.
If you are willing to compromise on in-built compiler and SVN support, then I would say Source Insight is the best tool for your all other requirement.

Good IDE/compiler for simple C dll's

I'm trying to disassemble a C/C++ DLL, and have made some progress, but I would like to create my own C DLL with the same function the original exports, and compare disassemblies.
Visual Studio adds to much crap, and when I remove the crap and build my project, the expected DLL is missing.
I need a lightweight, preferably IDE, tool to edit and build very simple C libraries.
Take a look at Code::Blocks
I need a lightweight, preferably IDE, tool to edit and build very simple C libraries.
I have found that one of the best ways to do integrated C-only Win32 development is using the freely available Lcc Win32 Compiler which comes with a built-in IDE, including resource editor.
In fact, it is really very lightweight and can be run from a USB stick with some manual tweaking.
It's indeed a really small download of just 6 mb and you can even download an optional Win32 API help file which is really useful while doing development.
The compiler also comes with a C tutorial, as well as good user documentation detailing how to use the integrated Win32 resource editor "wedit", there's also an advanced manual about more complex development tasks.
Dev-C++ is a nice and fast IDE which works well with MingW.
But it's all been asked and answered before ...
MinGW adds its own crap. Install your VC express properly and save yourself a lifetime of trouble.
Btw, you don't need to use Visual Studio for its compiler or vice versa. The oddity of missing a build dll is probably because you are not looking at the right path.
If you are building C DLLs you really would benefit from its command line toolset and utilities, sdks, easy config etc. MS lock-in proprietary extensions are widely used (in context of you trying to emulate another dll), and last thing you need is chasing cross compiler issues..
GCC + any text editor such as VIM is a very light alternative.
For Windows Development, all you need is inside MinGW
Edit: If you are in dire need of an IDE you can also use the MinGW tools from Eclipse with the CDT plugin. Although it adds weight to the solution because of the installation of Eclipse, this is what I really use to build my small DLLs (JNI wrappers in my case).
You can setup your small and direct makefiles or let Eclipse do it automatically for you and concentrate only on the source files (*.h, *.c).
The best part of using this approach instead other IDE is that you do not need Eclipse to further build the DLL, since the underlying project files generated are standard ones directly usable by integrated dev inside MinGW (or any Unix distro) such as make, configure, automake, and so on.
I'll second the vote for Code::Blocks, it's what I use (despite having VS 2008 installed as well). It is very simple and lightweight but has basically all the features you'd expect out of an IDE. It comes with several predefined project templates for all kinds of C and C++ development, including templates for DLLs.
Download the version that includes MinGW and you get a complete lightweight IDE ready to start compiling. You can also easily configure it to use the Visual Studio compiler instead of gcc if you prefer.
try Open Watcom. A cross-platform product, well-supported by the community, lets you develop in DOS, Windows, OS/2 etc for a lot of platforms. Version 1.8 was released recently. Has a light-weight IDE indeed

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