Re: [pilot-db-list] development environment (was: Hebrew support)

[Nathan K. <na...@ve...>]

> BTW, I tried playing with the simulator very briefly. I saw it has its
> own ROMs, which IIRC are the really compatible with real devices' ROMs.
> Is it so? Doesn't this mean that for debugging a problem with a new real
> device you still need a new real device (unless the problem isn't specific
> to it, but rather is related to high resolution etc.)?

There are some device specific Simulator ROM's as well, but you are
correct that they are not identical to the real ROM's.  The supposed
advantage is that as a Simulator rather than an Emulator, it can be
more aggressive in flagging subtle bugs.  Personally, I think the
Emulator made much more sense, but this could be my prejudice just
because it is open source and works on Linux.

> That's just fine with me - 1.1.0 is ok for me. I just wanted to make
> sure that CVS doesn't also include fixes to bugs in 1.1.0 (and not only
> the middle of adding new features). Are you sure it's not the case?

It's possible (and certainly seemed probable) that it contains fixes
not contained in 1.1.0, but I haven't found them yet.  Instead I've
found layers of untested code with subtle untested bugs, mismatched
parentheses in some code branches (indicating code was never
compiled), and the absence of fixes present in the 1.1.0 code.

The hope that it included fixes as well as problems was what kept me
plugging away at it, but I've now decided that that hope was
misplaced, and the lack of finding these fixes is why I'm planning to
rollback to version 1.1.0.  I'm uncertain about this decision, though.

> For example, io.c from 1.1.0 #includes CharAttr.h, which does not exist
> in sdk5r3 (but does in older versions). CVS does not include it. Not that
> it's such a big thing, but maybe there are other fixes.

This was one of the first changes I made to the CVS code.  You can
browse <http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pilot-db/pilot-db/src/>
to get an idea of what I've changed versus what was found there.  So
trivially true: it is going to have to be redone as a fix
(discouraging) but it doesn't count as a fix found in the CVS.

> > > > Yes, external SDK's are required for these.  Worse, these SDK's aren't
> > > > all easily available, and need to be extensively massaged if they are
> > > > to work with GCC (prc-tools).  While you can build successfully
> > > > without them, in the CVS version I found bugs in the non-enabled code
> > > > path.  Contact me if you'd like help getting these SDK's.
> > > 
> > > No, unless you think I should also use them with 1.1.0.
> > 
> > Probably you should, but you are more likely to be safe without them.
> 
> If it's trivial for you to email, and not legally or otherwise
> problematic, go ahead. I'd rather work on an environment as yours and
> see the same bugs you see.

I'll try to wrap them up for you tomorrow.  Anyone else interested in
trying to do developement?

--nate