I know that FPC works under ARM+Linux. Is this also true for the Cortex version of ARM? One of our major applications is written in C++ simply because it is to run in the future on an embedded system as well as the PC. Well the embedded processor has been chosen - the Luminary (TI) ARM-Cortex processor.

Will FPC run on this processor? Does anyone have experience? If FPC runs I may be able to convert my last C++ app to pascal.

Thanks,
Andreas

"Cortex" is a whole family of ARM CPUs. FPC full supports the ARM Cortex "A" family of processor (A8, A9). The Luminary cpu is a Cortex- M3. These only support Thumb and Thumb-2. There is support for Thumb-2 (and in particular the Cortex-M3) in FPC trunk, but I don't know how well-tested or maintained it is (the support was added via third party patches).

Jonas

From my findings Luminary is Cortex-M3 based, in which case there's needed a base code RTL for it. FPC will generate code for it, and it should generally work, but it's not very optimized yet(other than generic optimization), and there are many unsupported inline assembler instructions(primarily special system instructions). But there are ofcourse workarounds for the assembler code

Currently there's only half working stub code for the STM32F103 Cortex-M3 based chip, but I'll gladly help if you have any questions

Regards,
Jeppe

Thanks Jonas and Jeppe for your answers. I will probably wait then to switch (or try to convince the company to use an ARM-9)

using Jonas and Jeppe's answers to my idiot questions in this forum, and Jeppe's startup code for the STM32F, I have FPC cross-compiling for the LM3S9B92, one of the TI Luminary processors. Getting interrupts working took some time. I think the next thing for me is to try calling the rom code from FPC. Then it should be possible to re- use all the library of C code supplied by TI and it will no longer be necessary to try and fathom lines such as:-

*((void (*)(void))(*(unsigned long *)0x2c)))();

which occurs in the USB example code :-)
I am not quite sure how to write that in FP, but I am sure someone will have an idea.

Geoffrey

Hi,

Something like this should work for that case:

type
  TMyProcedure = procedure;
// if the procedures/functions you want to invoke have parameters
// use something like this:
//
// TMyFunction = function(arg1 : type1; arg2 : type2) : result_type;
var
  x : TMyProcedure;
begin
  x := TMyProcedure(0x2c);
  x;  // to invoke it. Or "x()" if you prefer that
end.

Hth,
Thomas

Geoffrey Barton wrote

using Jonas and Jeppe's answers to my idiot questions in this forum, and Jeppe's startup code for the STM32F, I have FPC cross-compiling for the LM3S9B92, one of the TI Luminary processors.

If you've any reusable startup code, we would be happy to include it in official fpc.

certainly! where do you want it?

Geoffrey

Just email it to me or create a bug report and attach it.

Supplying a patch on the bug tracker would probably be the best way