[Amforth] Feedback on "Whacky ideas" from " AmForth Weekend 1 (2020-06-27/28)"

[Carsten S. <ca...@st...>]

Hi Erich,
Hi amForth coders,

@Erich: thank you for continuing the work on amForth!

I've been absent from amForth for a long time, but I consider to 
join
back in to do some work on the RISC-V and ARM side of things (I
currently have no usecase for AVR, but that is fine).

I want to respond to an list of questions from Erich earlier this 
year
(sorry for being so late). I think these ideas could need more 
discussion.

>- Whacky Ideas
>
>  - git? -- With all the cool kids using git repositories, should
>    I attempt do convert the existing repositories, webpage, etc?
>    does sourceforge.net provide git repositories? Can the
>    existing svn repository be converted on the server side?

I find SourceForge (SF) a real pain and I don't like to interact 
with
the SF system/webpage.

I think there is a =git= interface on SF, but it does not have the 
workflow
the workflow that makes =git= successful elsewhere. =git= alone 
does not
help much, it's the workflow around it that makes developent and
contribution fun to use.

I really prefer to use SourceHut (https://sr.ht) these days, the
interface is quick and lean (no JavaScript required). I also find 
that
Drew DeVault, who runs SH, has a good view on free software 
development.

GitLab and GitHub have their own problems, but are quite popular 
and, for
me, are less painful compared to SF.

>  - Should we use a ticket system rather than mailing list?

Both. The ticket system should work over email and should 
integrate into
an email workflow. A mailing list is nice(er) for general 
discussions.

>  - Who of you is using which target controller? Would it be
>    feasible to drop msp430, arm, risc-v in order to simplify the
>    whole thing? yes/no?

As I would like to work on RISC-V and ARM, I vote =NO= here.

>  - Can we get rid of the Atmel/Microchip Avrasm Assembler?
>
>    One big difference between the avr8 and the risc-v tree is
>    the assembly language. avr8 is using Atmels assembly. Which
>    is good, because it is thoroughly documented. And which is
>    bad, because there is no working free/libre alternative to
>    avrasm.exe. Yes there is the "avra" project but it has been
>    abandoned long ago. I have been able to assemble AmForth with
>    avra way back in releases 4.2 up until maybe 4.9. I have even
>    contributed a small patch to make atmega644p working.
>    https://sourceforge.net/projects/avra/
>
>    Matthias has contemplated the idea to port AmForth/avr8 to
>    use gnu assembly. He might even have produced a working
>    branch, I don't know.

I've used AVRA back in the day when I've worked with amForth 4.x.

Using Wine and non free software is generally a no go for me, 
esp. as I often work
on non-Intel machines (ARM, MIPS, PPC). There I need to be able to
compile from source.

>    For risc-v there is no avr assembly, naturally. That's where
>    all the .s assembly files come into the game.
>
>    I personally would love to have a free/libre assembler for
>    avr assembly. AVRASM.EXE is the only thing that forces me to
>    install wine on my system.

Maybe porting amForth own AVR assembler
(http://amforth.sourceforge.net/TG/recipes/Assembler.html) to 
GNU/Forth
and use that as the base assembler?

Greetings

Carsten