XC -> Xtremely Challenging (just a build failure)

[AkkiSan]

Hi all,

I received my first XMOS chips and a XK-1 DevKit just a few hours ago...
While still at work, I installed the XMOS IDE on my "pure, hardware-only"
Windoze-XP system, free of any softwerker's tools (as it should be ;-))

Now, back at home, I tried the same here (XP).

Any build process failed with

"make (e=2) (....) unable to find file (...) blabla.xc"

After an hour or two, I still was stuck and decided to throw out every
other SDK or GCC related stuff from the system path, namely:

- SDCC
- GPUTILS
- YAGARTO
- C30 (Microchip)
- CodeSourcery++
- Ride7

Others are hidden by Cygwin or still on the path without causing problems.

After doing so, the build problems had gone.
(No, I did not yet try to find out which of the package(s) above caused
the problems. Time is the enemy ;)

At least to me, this failure is not obvious.
As far as I can see, all the XMOS tools come with a preceding 'x',
and except for 'xmake', they are all unique...
(And I do not have any other 'xmake' on this system.)

Well, did I miss something?
Where does this strange failure result from?

Any help or further tips on diagnostics would be appreciated.
As a hardware-man, I need to switch over from one SDK to another
within an hour... (and I somehow dislike changing the paths all
the time).

Is there any possibility to make the XMOS IDE accept absolute paths,
using its own tools only?
(Oh my! I took an hour driving through the preferences menu.
It might even allow you to change the color of your underwear ;-)


Axel

[leon_heller]

I have most of that stuff on my desktop PC (XP), plus a lot more, and it doesn't cause any problems with the XMOS tools.

Leon

[AkkiSan]

I have most of that stuff on my desktop PC (XP), plus a lot more, and it doesn't cause any problems with the XMOS tools.

Well, this sounds promising...

BTW:
You were the one that made me ordering the XMOS parts...
I read one of your posts in the Prop forum ;)


Axel

[leon_heller]

How are you finding it so far (apart from the problems getting the tools working)?

There are a quite a few other Propeller-heads here, of course.

Leon

[AkkiSan]

The culprit has been found: Bash from Yagarto Tools...

How are you finding it so far

I was looking and waiting for a fast and low pin count MCU/CPU for years.
Especially the clock and strobe port-functionalities sound promising.

But right now, I am struggling with the documentation.
Beside the fact that all the information is spread among several
different documents, a lot of information about the implementation,
timing and internals (aka.: hardware) is missing (or needs to be found ;-).

I guess it will take some time to get used to it...


Axel

[leon_heller]

Yes, it can be hard to find what one wants in the documentation; it really needs sorting out. You can always ask on here, though.

Leon

[TonyD]

I agree with Leon, the documentation can be a little hard to digest in places, but the forums here and at xmoslinkers.org are friendly and a good places to ask any questions if you get stuck.

As too problems with the tools (any software tools not just Xmos) I find a PC Virtual Machine very useful to have on my PC desktop. If a tool gives me problems I'll run it in the VM and check how well it behaves there, then once I get a working setup, duplicated it on my PC. But having said this, my Xmos setup worked fine on my PC.

[AkkiSan]

here and at xmoslinkers.org are friendly and a good places to ask any questions if you get stuck

Thanks for the hint!
There seem to be a lot of infos already available...


All my analyzers are currently attached to other projects, so
I thought it would be useful to play around with the simulator,
disassembler and other parts of the IDE, just to get a feeling
for the chip, its instruction set and the missing information about
the hardware, timing, etc...

Well, it took me about two hours to get the waveform viewer started 8(
Accompanied by dozens of error messages, IDE crashes and - funniest part -
simply no reaction, I got myself a beer. Looks much more relaxed, now...
Unfortunately, all the crashes persist...

I am confident that, if I retain this pace, I can manage start coding at the end of this year ;)

Axel

[TonyD]

A couple or three of Xmos documents I've found useful are:

• Programming XC on XMOS Devices
• XS1 Ports Specification
• XMOS Tools User Guide

pdfs of these can be found at www.xmos.com/support/documentation

[mike]

Hi Axel,

The XDE does not set any global environment variables on your system, they are set locally in a batch script when the XDE or the tools command prompt is launched. You should try to ensure that other SDKs on your machine do the same, otherwise as you've seen you can get conflicts.

If you come across any bugs or crashes in the XDE, you can submit a support ticket on the xmos.com website.

Cheers,
Mike