gnupic: Thread: want an sdcc howto?

Hi,

My preference for high-level langages puts me at odds with much of this
list's membership, but there are those who feel the same as I do.

The problem with high level languages on PIC micros has been the lack of
a usable, free/opensource implementation.

sdcc has suffered a bad rap because it's very newbie-unfriendly to set
up and get going. Also, its binary packaging has been botched, at least
on Debian.

But with a bit of doco, this problem can go away, to the point where
sdcc's accessibility is on a par with that of the commercial compilers.

I'm willing to write an 'sdcc on PIC Howto', which takes the user step
by easy step through:

  - downloading the source tarball
  - configuring the build
  - building the core toolchain and extras
  - installing the toolchain, libs, headers and support files
  - writing a 'hello, world' LED blinker program in C
  - turning that into a valid and working .hex binary (including
    a fix for the broken crt0 module)
  - setting up and using usart-based stdio (so 'printf()' works)
  - practicalities of C hacking on PIC

Question is - is any interested in actually seeing/using such a
document? I'd rather get some votes of support before launching in and
expending several hours on something that might not be used.

I'd really like to see more interest in sdcc on this list, because it's
the only viable free/opensource high-level language compiler that spans
both 16F and 18F, and deserves a place as the 'reference' high level
language for PIC.

Thoughts?

-- 
Cheers
David

David McNab <david <at> rebirthing.co.nz> writes:

>   - turning that into a valid and working .hex binary (including
>     a fix for the broken crt0 module)

I think at least a step by step guide for this should be published, if possible
in the SDCC manuals, I'm stuck there, too. GPLink crashes with a segfault while
removing unused sections from the object when crt0i.o is linked in.