[luau] linux porting question

[Virgil]

Hi Charles,

I'm by no means a seasoned programmer and your question on how hard can it
be is a tough question to answer. I think it depends on your experience on
how much you know assembly and how to use various compilers that write to
embedded devices. I know that Motorola has some great tools for embedded
devices and one of them is called Codewarrior. I believe that it will help
in writing assembly/C code to the PPC chip/device that they have listed on
their site. Check out (if you haven't done so already):
http://www.metrowerks.com/mw/develop/embedded/powerpc/default.htm

You can also find something useful at: http://www.linuxdevices.com/

As I said, I'm not in the know when it comes to embedded systems. All I can
say is that embedded systems to me would be easier to write to compared to a
desktop OS since you won't have to worry about the overhead that comes with
a desktop OS. However, because size of the OS plays a big part in embedded
systems you are limited on what you can  and cannot do.

And if you find that writing an embedded OS is just too overwhelming,
companies like Palmsource.com do license out their OS. I'm not saying you
should but it might be an option your looking for.

Hope this helps. 

Virgil


> Sorry if this is unclear, I'm trying to figure out how to ask the question.
> 
> This is primarily in regards to an embedded device, but I don't know the
> answer for the "standard" system either.
> 
> Say you've got a board that has a cpu on it that is supported by the
> Linux kernel.  And you have the tool chain for compiling for that cpu.
> And the kernel source, and the source for the whole standard distribution.
> 
> When compiling the kernel, what board specific things would you need to
> know?  What wouldn't be in the kernel?
> 
> I was going throught the "linux from scratch" book, and went through the
> whole process and built the distribution one peice at a time.  And I got
> to wondering how hard it would be to do this for an embedded platform.
> We look at embedded systems all the time and don't use them because the
> distribution is usually monta vista's hard-hat or something similar, and
> we don't want to shell out the bucks for their licensing.  But if
> hardhat is already runnable on it, and the cpu is supported by either
> the main kernel distro or by the ppc kernel distro, how hard could it
> be?  But when I say that "how hard could it be?"  in a different tone it
> sounds pretty ominous.
> 
> Any feedback?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Charles
> 
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