Today I am going to try to find and summarize more info about how to
install MSPGCC related tools on a Mac Intosh.
This is a very first article, I hope it will evolve with your contributions.
Unfortunately, there are not so many pointers about mspgcc MacOS-X on
internet. And as for the explanations, they look like memos for the
writer himself, but they don't look like thorough explanations. So what I
propose here is to try to make a how-to that would enable beginners to
start
This should contain:
- An idiot-proof install guide. I guess if I can install, everybody can, so
I am ready to play the role of the average idiot. In fact, the best solution
would be an installer as all mac users are used to. You don't want to know
what is done because it is the programmer's problem, you just want to
double-click-install (or drag & drop install), and then use the software.
- Some explanation of what we do once installed;
- Some sample code explaining how to make a LED blink on TI's board,
and also a full explanation of how to edit, compile, load, run and debug it.
1. What can be found on internet:
I had found some links on internet in a previous search, let's try to look
at these links.
1.1 Darmstadt university link
This link contains a howto explaining how to install TinyOS. TinyOS might
be a good OS, but one thing at a time, I would like to start with MSPGCC
only, so I will only focus on the instructions to install MSPGCC.
- The first step is a verification of the make version. make -v gives me
the right version, so I will skip this paragraph.
- The shell variables: I have set the variables as indicated although I
don't agree that the executable should be under the sources path.
- Download TinyOS: I will skip this step as said previously.
- Building mspgcc:
At this point, I don't understand. Here is the whole instruction paragraph:
- Code: Select all
(downloading and making mspgcc, the cross compiler)
> cd $SOURCESDIR
(download wget from: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-1.9.tar.gz to the current directory)
> tar xzf wget-1.9.tar.gz
> cd wget-1.9
> ./configure && make && sudo make install
(wget is now installed in /usr/local/bin)
> cd $TOSROOT/tools/src/mspgcc
(fix the cp -a option in the build-mspgcc script:)
> nano build-mspgcc
(search for cp with [Ctrl]-W, type 'cp' and change the '-a' after each cp into '-r')
(close nano, by pressing [Ctrl]-O, Enter, [Ctrl]-X)
> INSTALL_DIR=$SOURCESDIR/msp430 CC=/usr/bin/gcc-3.3 ./build-mspgcc install
Why is he installing wget? In the whole page, the wget utility is never
used, just install. I know it cannot hurt the whole process to have wget,
but what is the relation with mspgcc? Did he want to use wget to download
mspgcc? In this case, there is one instruction missing for download and
also some hints about where to decompress the file would not hurt.
So I will assume that some part of the scripts use wget, and I will skip
this part because wget is already installed on my machine.
No, NESC. One or 2 words about what it is / does would be nice.
According to google, it is a programming language for networked systems.
I will skip this part.
Almost all the rest is TinyOS related. But the code for MSPGCC is not
downloaded yet. I guess it is the missing lines that fail to get the code
downloaded. Is it included in tinyOS? Let's try to get tit anyway.
- Code: Select all
> cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos login
CVS password:
> [Enter, as indicated in the instructions]
cvs [login aborted]: connect to cvs.sourceforge.net(66.35.250.207):2401 failed: Connection refused
1.2. Let's look at other references
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/proj/tinyos-macos/
http://www.allthingsalceste.com/tinyos-on-mac-os-x/
All the references I find use the cvs -d pserver stuff, and all the
attempts fail.
2. [temporary] Conclusion
Ai have tried to get information as an average user. There is some
information, and apparently there are successful stories about using
MSPDCC on a MacIntosh. But the initial effort seems to be high for
non-expert users.
Probably some of the links I was referring to used to work but refer
to invalid links.
I hope some people will join me in an effort of providing tools for
MacOS-X embedded programming combining all the opensource
advantages and some user-friendness.
Do not hesitate to register. Any participation is welcome.
NB: I have tightened the antispam rules, and I must validate the
users before they post. Sorry about this, but it helps getting rid of
X-tremely unrelated posts.
Pascal