Re: msp430-elf-gcc upcoming release

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 1:00 PM, DJ Delorie <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> * The only headers/linker scripts available are from
>> GCC_RH_20131206.zip; memory.ld and peripherals.ld for each MCU need to
>> be manually combined to get something binutils can process
>
> Hmmm... I was under the impression that there were toplevel
> chip-specific scripts that included the sub-scripts.  Maybe that's
> handled some other way in the TI IDE...

Must be, because the published zip file doesn't have them.

>> * __delay_cycles() didn't get back-ported from the version that TI
>> published back in December
>
> My bad.  I can provide it if anyone needs it, but I'll see about
> adding it to the 4.9 branch.

Thanks.  This intrinsic is one I depend on.

>
>> I expect there'll be some issues with newlib as well; it appears to
>> use a unique syscall interface that I haven't tried to reverse
>> engineer.
>
> It uses the TI CIO interface.

Interesting; is there any public documentation on how to use that?

An option to build MSP430 newlib with the standard system interface
would be even better.  It's not clear to me why a TI-specific
interface is desirable to anybody other than TI.  Part of the point of
using a GNU-based toolchain is portability across processors (even if
vendors would prefer that we be locked to their offerings).

If the standard newlib system API were used I could be up and running
with the msp430-elf toolchain today; since it isn't, and CIO isn't
documented, I can't really do much with newlib or the toolchain.  Much
of what I do uses libc, and I'm content with the size impact of
newlib-nano from gcc-arm-embedded.  (Not with "big" newlib, though.)

>>> Insight from Red Hat on a complete set of recommended flags known to
>> work together would be appreciated.
>
> We build with the "big" newlib, for testing.  There are a bunch of flags
> which I mentioned in my "size optimization" email:
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg11977.html

I saw that, but it only mentioned two specific flags, compared with
the nine that are used by gcc-arm-embedded (though they're using a
forked newlib).  However if nobody actually uses newlib for
applications on MSP430 yet, perhaps the community will come up with a
set of flags that work.

Peter

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