The Icon Bar: Software migrates to the Beagleboard port

The Icon Bar: News and features: Software migrates to the Beagleboard port

Software migrates to the Beagleboard

Posted by Chris on 15:08, 8/4/2010
Hardware, Programming, RISC OS, RISC OS Open Ltd

There's been a fair bit of effort to get RISC OS software working on ROOL's port of RISC OS to the Beagleboard and other OMAP-driven boards. The shift from software that works on the Iyonix to software that works on the OMAP family isn't as big as the shift to 32-bit of a few years ago, but there are still some issues. Most importantly, the OMAP family of processors use the 'ARMv7' specification, which means that certain instructions that work on the Iyonix's IOP processor (or earlier) fall over.

The ease of fixing a recalcitrant application depends on how it's been written. If the app's written in BASIC, then all should be well. If it's written in C, then a recompile with the latest version of the GCC or Norcroft tools should fix it. If you've got some hand-crafted assembler to cope with, then the process is a bit more involved. There's a full list of these technical issues here.

As time goes on, more and more software is having fixes applied to enable compatibility. Over the last few days, David Pilling's Ovation Pro and SparkFS have been updated to work with the new hardware. The text editor Zap has also been fixed, though there's not an official release of this yet. Apps like NetSurf, KinoAMP, ArtWorks and RDPClient already work, and there's some indication that EasiWriter and TechWriter will soon join the list.

More details on the applications that work on the new hardware platform can be found here. Hopefully this list will keep on growing. Meanwhile, at least one RISC OS user is happy with the experience of using the BeagleBoard...

	Software migrates to the Beagleboard port
	hubersn (09:51 9/4/2010) nunfetishist (10:13 9/4/2010) hubersn (12:06 9/4/2010) nunfetishist (13:36 9/4/2010) flibble (14:31 9/4/2010) trevj (11:50 9/4/2010) hubersn (12:02 9/4/2010) trevj (12:54 9/4/2010) trevj (12:03 5/7/2010)

Steffen Huber	Message #113928, posted by hubersn at 09:51, 9/4/2010
Member Posts: 91	Anyone got a migration strategy for Ada code (i.e. GCC 2.7.2 with hand-patched runtime for 32bit compatibility)?
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Rob Kendrick	Message #113929, posted by nunfetishist at 10:13, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113928
Today's phish is trout a la creme. Posts: 524	Mechanical conversion to another high-level language?
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Trevor Johnson	Message #113931, posted by trevj at 11:50, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113928
Member Posts: 660	Great stuff. By the time less 'hobbyist' hardware is available, it looks as if RISC OS users will have a considerable pool of software to choose from. We'd better all keep feeding our piggy banks! Remember that even those without a development board can contribute to the documentation wiki or donate to help with ROOL's costs. ROOL also plans to have some promotional merchandise for sale at the Wakefield show.
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Steffen Huber	Message #113932, posted by hubersn at 12:02, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113928
Member Posts: 91	What are the chances of an Aemulor-like system for backwards compatibility? Or that the unaligned access exception handler would be extended to fix up erronenous accesses? We have faster hardware, so we should think quick about a way to waste a lot of CPU cycles for emulating old code
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Steffen Huber	Message #113933, posted by hubersn at 12:06, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113929
Member Posts: 91	Mechanical conversion to another high-level language? Actually, there is an Ada compiler available by SofCheck that compiles Ada into (apparently even human-readable) ANSI C, but being an Ada-world product, it is extremely expensive. The pricing in Ada-world just does not account for the development model "one developer, part-time".
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Trevor Johnson	Message #113934, posted by trevj at 12:54, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113932
Member Posts: 660	What are the chances of an Aemulor-like system for backwards compatibility? Although the Aemulor support forum doesn't seem to make any reference to the Beagleboard port, Adrian Lees must already be on the case with this "very early prototype".
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Rob Kendrick	Message #113936, posted by nunfetishist at 13:36, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113933
Today's phish is trout a la creme. Posts: 524	Actually, there is an Ada compiler available by SofCheck that compiles Ada into (apparently even human-readable) ANSI C, but being an Ada-world product, it is extremely expensive. The pricing in Ada-world just does not account for the development model "one developer, part-time". Time to write your own compiler targeting C, and sell it for slightly less?
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Peter Howkins	Message #113937, posted by flibble at 14:31, 9/4/2010, in reply to message #113936
Posts: 892	compiles Ada into ANSI C Time to write your own compiler targeting C, and sell it for slightly less? But don't write it in Ada, else you'll run into recursion issues.
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Trevor Johnson	Message #114777, posted by trevj at 12:03, 5/7/2010, in reply to message #113928
Member Posts: 660	...Hopefully this list will keep on growing. For anyone not in the habit of following the ROOL forum, the list referred to in the original article has indeed been recently updated and is populated with plenty of OKs.
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