gnupic: Thread: gputils development

Scott,

A few months ago, we were discussing improvements to gputils, but we didn't have much time to dig in deep.  I poked around in the source code then, but I never got very far, and I've probably forgotten most of what I figured out then.

I know you're probably still busy with your contract projects, but do you have time to discuss a plan of action?  I'd like to figure out any changes we need to make to the pCode format before moving it over, and I'm also still nervous about how side-effects (PCLATH, computed gotos, INDF->PCL) will affect the task of determining basic blocks.

A few other comments about gputils: what's involved in making a new bugfix release for the '$ label clash' bugfix?  I don't think anything's happened toward that end, and if you remember some SDCC users ran into it after the changes were in CVS.  I also think it would be a good idea to move to SVN before any more changes are made.  I don't believe I'm listed as a developer for gputils (username: merc64), and I might need that eventually.  And lastly, I noticed that James Bowman started gpasm in 1997, so this year is (or was) gputils' 10th anniversary.

David

It's been my experience that gputils has a steep learning curve for
development, probably more so than the average open source project.

I think the reasons are probably that:
 - the source language (C) is fairly low-level
 - the project has changed hands several times and never had a large
development team
 - the scope (translating PIC assembly) is pretty complicated and not very
exciting on the face of it

I've set up a page on the gputils wiki with some background and a place for
suggestions: http://gputils.wiki.sourceforge.net/FosteringInnovation. Please
feel welcome to freely add/modify, but please keep specific feature-related
discussion in the Feature Request tracker or the FeatureWishlist page (for
more ambitious suggestions).

I'd like to throw out a few questions:
 - First, am I making a big deal about nothing? Is gputils' current
development cycle okay, slow pace, dead periods and all?
 - Has anyone started to dig through the source code and make changes, but
given up? What might have helped you continue (e.g. specific questions
answered, other developers working in parallel, IRC bug days...)?
 - For developers who have contributed big patches (Borut, Michael Ballbach,
Andreas Kabel, many more...), do you have any ideas or experience to share?
 - What features added in recent history have been most helpful (new COFF
support, CONFIG directive on PIC18, etc.)?
 - Has anyone switched back to MPASM because of a feature missing from
gputils?

I haven't had much energy lately to work on gputils, but I'd like to do
whatever little things I can (answer questions, touch up docs, work closely
with other devs) to help accelerate development.

David