2nd Week results

Now it’s time for me to summarize what I learned in these days:

The compiling procedure:

As the Lejos OSEK name suggests, a configuration requires to be implemented by using the OSEK Implementation Language, hence the compiling procedure must run through the parsing of some code written in OIL. In this particular case a windows executable named SG.EXE gets used in order to actuate this phase.

The good thing is that it runs smoth under wine. The bad thing is that I can’t get the source code as I’ve done for the loading utility. I’ve asked for help on the Nxtasy forum, learning that Toppers project won’t release the source code for it.

At least my toolbox works:

Since, as I said in my previous post, the Lejos OSEK firmware that I’ve compiled doesn’t do anything, I’ve compiled the original Lejos source code and loaded the resulting firmware image. As the display showed the Lejos logo I had confirm that:

• runc actually works;
• the toolchain works.

After all this is a good starting point. Now I just need to discover what’s wrong with the firmware.

Uploading tools: it should work

I’ve put my hands inside the “old” lejos nxj code: the source tree provides even two version of the uploading software runc (the same runc.exe that I mentioned in my previous post) and fwflash. As runc is “based on fwflash”, it’s supposed to be enhanced…

Uploading tools replacement

The uploading procedure implies the use of the windows executable named runc.exe. This program should be executed under cygwin, so this puts me in the strange situation of running cygwin under wine.

1st Week Results

Today some important steps have been done. This article refers to the following configuration:

• lejos osek version: 1.09
• binutils version: 2.17
• gcc version: 4.1.1
• newlib version: 1.16.0

Osek Specification

The Lejos Osek system follows the specification of OSEK. Some blocks of code are written in oil (OSEK Implementation Language) format.

The whole specification document is available at the the OSEK VLX Portal.

Some useful readings

Lurking on the web, trying to figure out how a cross compiling process works, I’ve found some useful readings.

First of all the Wikipedia page about Cross Compiling is a good brief starting point. This article gives some useful information about the newlib system.

Since of any lejos osek examples (found in the lejos_osek/samples/ directory) requires to be built against to the c++ standard library, there’s a need for a lightweight one. I’m going to find it out.

Starting my work

Today I got the NXT set.

Useful links:

1. Lego Mindstorm website

2. Lejos Osek Website

Whenever possible the work will be done under a GNU/Linux environment. The GNU/Linux arm gcc toolchain has been retrieved. Since there has been some troubles while compiling the gcc arm compiler, the source has been replaced with the tarball from the gnu website: it seems to work properly. The same thing happens with the newlib package. Nevertheless gnuarm.com provides some useful instruction.