onboardc-project — Main list for discussing needed features, fixes, and development strategies

[Onboardc-project] re: welcome page comments

[David B. <da...@xp...>]

Responding to some clarifications that Mike requested earlier (thanks Mike):

I do think that discussions should take place on this email list rather than
the web-based forum.  Email is more ubiquitous than the web (more convenient
to use on a PDA, for example). Email doesn't require a laborious login
procedure. It's easier to manage communications in multiple forums if they
are all via email.  I encourage folks to check the web forum from time to
time to see what others may have posted there, but unless many of you feel
differently I'd like to encourage people to use the list. Developers are
*definitely* encouraged to subscribe to the OnBoardC Yahoo forum
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OnBoardC) since there's probably no better
source of information about the real concerns of users. There are something
like1400 subscribers to that group now--a great user base.

Voting will be handled using the SF survey feature--at least we'll try that
at first to see how we like it.

I'll clarify these points on the Home page.

While we're on the topic of the Home page, let me put a question to those of
you who have hosted projects with SF before: how do you go about uploading
web pages on SF using CVS?  I tried to set the path in WinCVS as SF
suggested (something like /home/o/on/onboardc/) but it tries to put CVSROOT
at the end of the path and then tells me the directory doesn't exist.  I'd
really like to get some pages up there today, especially the home page and a
proposed task list we can discuss and vote on.

David


*****original message*****
david,

 1. overall really good!
     a. nice and clean looking
     b. not too complicated

 2. Administrivia section seems redundant. I think you should just move the
last sentence in
that
 section up to under the bullet point list in the developers section, and
remove this
section.

 3. I'd like to clarify -where- the developers should discuss the issues in
the welcome
page.
     a. are all discussions held in this mailing list (i.e. should not use
the web-forum)?
     b. are votes handled by email or by SF survey?
     c. should we make a note that users use the yahoo page, so developers
might want to
check that
 out every once and a while?

 4. minor page design points: (just my personal preferences)
     a. make "onboardc-project" the link to the page instead of saying "this
page"
     b. make "archive" the link to the archive instead of saying "here"
     [ links stand out by color, and if you're skimming the page, "this
page" and "here"
don't mean
 anything ]

 5. I'd be interested in why the GPL was chosen (opposed to LGPL, BSD, etc.)
as part of the
history
 section.

 that's all for now.

 [ still impatient for the source, :) ]

 mike.

[Onboardc-project] The source is up

[David B. <da...@xp...>]

(Copied from post on OnBoardC Yahoo group--delete this if you already read
it)

OK, I finally fixed a couple of problems that were keeping me from
committing the source to the CVS repository: (1) WinCVS requires Tcl/Tk --
not documented in the SF installation instructions, and (2) a simple error
of having the the case wrong in the directory path. Perhaps I should add the
problem that took the most time to fix: (3) a two week backlog of tasks for
work that needed to be completed for a product release.

So, feeling a bit foolish, but I'm relieved to finally announce that the
source code is finally out there on the SourceForge site where I'll have
less of a chance to slow things up (especially since it looks like Wade is
back).

For some reason the Summary page does not acknowledge that any files have
been committed, but if you browse the CVS tree you can see the files and
should be able to check out working copies if you have CVS installed
properly on your system (and have developer access, which I can give you as
soon as you tell me you want it and give me a SourceForge login ID). Let me
know if you have trouble and I'll try to solve any problems as quickly as
possible.

The instructions SourceForge offers for uploading web pages to their web
server leave much to be desired, but when I get finished tonight I'll try to
move the home page from it's current location at
www.xpinneret.com/OBC/index.html to SourceForge and get a proposed task list
up for discussion.

Much appreciated is the work to get OnBoardC compiling in GCC and updated
versions of CW.  I'd like to open discussion again about how we should
handle getting a version that compiles in *both*.  Do we start with two
forks and then when each is compiling in it's respective compiler begin
taking stabs at merging them? I think since the source was originally
written for CodeWarrior there might be some logic to getting it to compile
in CW first (using the 4.0 SDK) then turning to GCC as the second task.

Once we have a decision on this we'll post a task list, vote on it, assign
points-of-contact to the tasks, and give the "Jolly Roger" to the first
developer on the list. But let's take this discussion over to the
onboardc-project list. As for the voting, it looks like the Survey feature
on SourceForge is worth a try to handle this.

Last I spoke to Matthew, he was going to see if he could create some web
pages for helping us manage and display the status of the Roger. He designed
a very nice site for another open source Palm project on SF (still under
construction at http://filecaddy.sourceforge.net). Take a look and offer
comments if you think you'd like something similar.

David

Re: [Onboardc-project] OnBoardC compiling OnBoardC

[David B. <da...@xp...>]

Dirk said:
> wouldn't it be the easiest platform to be OBC to compile OBC instead of
> CodeWarrior or gcc?  Then at least we'd all have a common platform, and
> OBC could prove its functionality.

This is a goal that we'd all like to achieve but if my experience with
SrcEdit is any indication, it will be a challenge that will only be met when
OnBoardC is more compliant with C standards--and maybe when we've got a
debugger that will work with it.  I've never been able to get any idea why
the SrcEdit code chokes so badly when we try to compile it in OnBoardC. At
first I'll be pretty happy when we've got the source compiling in the two
main desktop compilers for Palm.

Getting back to the debugger: Roger's beta version of OnBoard Debugger
didn't come with the source code he gave me.  Before long I'll ask him about
this and see if he's willing to open that up as well.

David

[Onboardc-project] OnBoardC compiling OnBoardC

[Dirk B. <kr...@kr...>]

Hi there,

wouldn't it be the easiest platform to be OBC to compile OBC instead of
CodeWarrior or gcc?  Then at least we'd all have a common platform, and
OBC could prove its functionality.

Cheers,
Dirk

[Onboardc-project] Prerelease release

[David B. <da...@xp...>]

(Copy of post to OnBoardC Yahoo group.  Visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onboardc and join the group if you want to
download the file mentioned below)

All right then.  I decided everyone should be able to look at the source
whether or not we had things set up for version control on SourceForge.  So
by popular demand I'm loading to the Files section a zip file with the
OnBoardC and OnBoard Assembler projects.  (SrcEdit is not included, although
it will be hosted on the same tree as the other two on SF.)

Here are some things we need to discuss as we look at the source:

1.  One "Roger" or multiple "Rogers":  is the source sufficiently modular
that a developer working on a task in module A should be able to commit to
the CVS tree without waiting for the Roger to be passed to him by a
developer working on module C?  If so, what are the modules?  Compiler,
Assembler, Editor?

2.  How shall we accommodate developers using different compilers to make
builds?  I'd suggest minimally that Codewarrior users switch to the PilRC
plugin so that we don't have to maintain parallel versions of the resource
files. (You'll notice that I've included an initial port of the resources to
PilRC in the archive along with the Constructor .rsrc file--hopefully that's
been a trouble-free conversion.)  But is it feasible to maintain the source
in a form that compiles equally well (or at least compiles) in either GCC or
CW?

3.  For those of you using GCC, does the fact that the compiler is a
multi-segment application add some grit to the soup, maybe affecting the
answer to #2?

(This is starting to read like an essay exam for a college course in open
source software development!)

4, 5, 6, 7...  Your issues inserted here.

Please keep in mind, Yahoo is only a temporary home for this--development
will commence soon on SourceForge, which is where any serious changes to the
code should be made. There SF's CVS server will allow us to revert to any
version and test changes to identify where bugs have been introduced, etc.

Enjoy!  =)

David

[Onboardc-project] welcome page comments

[mike a. <mik...@ya...>]

david,

1. overall really good!
    a. nice and clean looking
    b. not too complicated
    
2. Administrivia section seems redundant. I think you should just move the last sentence in that
section up to under the bullet point list in the developers section, and remove this section.

3. I'd like to clarify -where- the developers should discuss the issues in the welcome page. 
    a. are all discussions held in this mailing list (i.e. should not use the web-forum)?
    b. are votes handled by email or by SF survey?
    c. should we make a note that users use the yahoo page, so developers might want to check that
out every once and a while?

4. minor page design points: (just my personal preferences)
    a. make "onboardc-project" the link to the page instead of saying "this page"
    b. make "archive" the link to the archive instead of saying "here"
    [ links stand out by color, and if you're skimming the page, "this page" and "here" don't mean
anything ]

5. I'd be interested in why the GPL was chosen (opposed to LGPL, BSD, etc.) as part of the history
section.

that's all for now.

[ still impatient for the source, :) ]

mike.
   

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[Onboardc-project] poll request: GCC vc. CW

[mike a. <mik...@ya...>]

just to get an idea, I'd be interested to see the split between GCC and CW.

I'm using GCC (PRC-Tools) [ when I'm not using OBC, of course ] and am pretty familiar with the
GCC toolset in general. ( I also use GCC for PC & Playstation2 development ) 

I know we need to get things compiling on both platforms, but I'd be interested in taking the
'Roger for getting GCC to work.

I'd also like to suggest that we try not to have GCC vs. CW #define checks. This notoriously leads
to problems later down the line. (Ask anyone who's trying to maintain a GCC/MSVC port!), but
rather have checks by feature availability (can it do this/that/the other thing) which is the
recommended approach for the auto config stuff too.

mike.

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[Onboardc-project] Welcome! So where is the source?

[David B. <da...@xp...>]

I don't know whether you folks are also members of the OnBoardC Yahoo group
or not, but it's time to start using this list for development-related
OnBoard C conversations anyway, so please excuse any repetition from my
postings there.

First let me say that the source code *will* be posted very soon--I'm just
having some trouble with CVS on SourceForge right now (which I heard through
the grapevine is a system-wide problem). In the meantime I've uploaded a
document to my own server that (1) I need some feedback on and (2) you as a
developer on this project will want to have some familiarity with.  Check
out www.xpinneret.com/OBC/index.html and let me know what you think about
the "interim charter" for the Onboard C project.  This was written by Wade
Guthrie and me based on discussions that have taken place over the last
couple of weeks in the Yahoo group.  I'm hoping that this kind of
"democratic" system will promote lots of good discussion about the direction
of the project so we have a healthy consensus about priorities, and also
hope the voting process doesn't seem too cumbersome.  I think we'll give it
a shot and see how it goes, but I did want your feedback.

David