RE: [avr-chat] Can't Install avr-gcc in FreeBSD

[Eric Weddington]

Hi All,

It looks like I'm a bit behind in the thread. So I'll commit a faux pas here
and see if I can reply to a bunch of comments, in random order, and without
interleaving the thread.

Yeah, Cygwin is a pain to use. I mean it's great to use for porting *nix
software, for one's self. But redistribution is where the gotcha comes in,
because everything gets linked to the cygwin1.dll and it doesn't play nicely
with other versions of itself. The only alternative is MinGW, but then it
sucks as a build platform because it doesn't have nearly as many packages as
Cygwin does. Over the years I've finally learned that I have to have both
Cygwin and MinGW for development; Cygwin for all the build tools, but build
with the MinGW compilers. I've also learned that the club of people who are
building cross-GCC compilers using Cygwin/MinGW is *very* small. So the
"repository of common knowledge" is still very small. I learn something new
every time I build WinAVR.

Avrdude has had the advantage that, when Brian opened it up and we (Brian,
Joerg, myself, and Ted Roth) did the porting effort, it was designed with
layers for different OSes. This certainly made it much easier to have it
build under Cygwin/MinGW. Avarice and simulavr have never done this in the
past, and will have to go through this process in the future to have them
ported to MinGW. Something that I've wanted done for a long time.

Yeah it took me awhile to go find all the tools needed to build the avr-libc
docs. Part of the problem was that I wasn't always on the lookout for the
tools. I admit that it was much easier to just download the existing
documentation. But, I also admit, that the tools situation on Windows has
steadily improved over the years. It's becoming easier and easier to do all
the same things as on *nix.

Yeah it's a bit odd that the MSP430 development is not done in the FSF tree.
But, hey, it's to the AVR's advantage. ;-) Although, I hate to admit that I
wasn't aware that there was a GCC port for Microchip's products. I had heard
of a possible port a while back (1-2 years ago maybe?) but I never knew what
came of it. Pointers welcome.

I've been really amazed at this thread and the people contributing to this
thread. This has to be one of the most civil discussions about Operating
Systems and software that I've been a part of in a long time! :-) Yeah, I'm
not a big fan of Microsoft Windows and its lack of reliability and I really
detest Microsoft's business practices. But I'm also a bit of a pragmatist in
that there are many, many users on Windows, for one reason or another.

I agree the installation system (or lack thereof) on Windows is maddening,
and I'm a victim of it. Joerg has talked to me about having a more
fine-grained installer for, what, a couple of years now? I still think that
it's a good idea, but it also means a lot of work in trying to implement it.
*nix systems, such as the FreeBSD ports system are better designed for
things like this. For Windows and WinAVR, I have to do all the heavy lifting
to implement it. And honestly, I haven't made time for it. From my view
there are many other places where the toolchain could be improved, such as
running the GCC regression test on a regular basis. :-) It's funny, but one
my long-term goals in doing WinAVR was always to introduce Windows users to
the concept of Open Source software with the intent that they would use more
and more and eventually move away from Windows to an open source OS. I've
now seen some fruits of this in that there are a number of users on AVR
Freaks who have openly said that they have moved, or are moving, to Linux.
It's funny because I have yet to make the move myself. :-) But some of this
is changing in that I now have a dual boot Linux machine (Fedora/Ubuntu) at
work that I will use for a lab computer.

@Brian:
Things have been going very well. Very busy, but very well. :-) Hope things
have been well with you too.

Anyway, I might've forgotten something, but I hoped I covered the thread...

Eric Weddington