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Forum: ARM programming with GCC/GNU tools Why Does newlib for yagarto use stubs?


von Richard S. (Company: Home Use) (shadders)


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Hi,

I have been using the Yagarto tools to program the AT91SAM7S embedded 
Evaluation Kit.

From version 4.3.2 to version 4.3.3 they changed the newlib as folows :

!!! This version of YAGARTO was built to support newlib with reentrant 
stubs !!!

I have a few questions on this :

1. Why did they do this ?.

2. Why use reentrant stubs which seem to only interface to a piece of 
code which you want to use. Why not use the procedure in its entirity ??

3. I think i can answer question 2 but not sure - it is to stop multiple 
copies of the functions sprintf for example being created in the 
program, and hence reduces overhead. Can anyone confirm that i am 
correct in this ? Thanks.

4. If they were going to use stubs for reentrant code - why did they 
state :

To make your life easier, an example "syscalls.c" can be find here:

http://www.yagarto.de/download/yagarto/syscalls.c

Where they have provided EXAMPLE syscalls.c. Why not just provide the 
definitive code for all to use without having to worry about it 
themselves ???

From what i can determine, you need to be very proficient in C and the 
details of how the compiler works and the interdependencies of the 
libraries.

I think that a novice in this area would be confused as i am.

Regards,

Richard.

von Tilo Lutz (Guest)


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Sure but thats the way programming works.
yagarto is a free toolchain. If you want more you will have to buy a 
comercial toolchain.

von Tilo Lutz (Guest)


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/EDIT

It's on to you to change this if you want.

von Richard S. (Company: Home Use) (shadders)


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Hi Tilo,

Thanks for the reply.

I just wondered why they did what they did in 4.3.3 and yet 4.3.2 was 
OK.

The sprintf function works on the embedded design, so i am perhaps 
confused at the mention of stubs thinking that the sprintf function 
would not work and i had to provide some interfacing.

Regards,

Richard.

von Tilo Lutz (Guest)


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I haven't used newlib very often because it makes no sense to use it in 
small uC projects.
Afaik the reentrant versions are needed to make newlib thread-safe.

von Clifford S. (clifford)


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Most of your questions wer probably answerd on teh other thread you 
tacked your question onto: http://embdev.net/topic/133927


>
> 1. Why did they do this ?.
>
The stubs are implemented to map teh library to your hardware.

> 2. Why use reentrant stubs which seem to only interface to a piece of
> code which you want to use. Why not use the procedure in its entirity ??
>
C has a global errno variable. In modern implementation it is not really 
a variable but a macro. In multithreaded code you need an errno value 
for each thread, otherwise you might test its value in one thread when 
it was set by another. The renetrant stubd allow you to inplement the 
necessary code for thread local storage. That's one reason.

> 3. I think i can answer question 2 but not sure - it is to stop multiple
> copies of the functions sprintf for example being created in the
> program, and hence reduces overhead. Can anyone confirm that i am
> correct in this ? Thanks.
>
That is nothing to do with it.


> 4. If they were going to use stubs for reentrant code - why did they
> state :
>
> To make your life easier, an example "syscalls.c" can be find here:
>
> http://www.yagarto.de/download/yagarto/syscalls.c
>
> Where they have provided EXAMPLE syscalls.c. Why not just provide the
> definitive code for all to use without having to worry about it
> themselves ???
>
Because not everyone's hardware is the same. Most embedded systems use 
proprietary hardware, even if they were initially developed on an 
evaluiation or dev board. You need to be able to adapt the library to 
work on any platform.

> From what i can determine, you need to be very proficient in C and the
> details of how the compiler works and the interdependencies of the
> libraries.
>
Maybe. Better documentation for Newlib would help, with some more 
realistic examples for different situations.


> I think that a novice in this area would be confused as i am.
>
If you are using off-the-shelf hardware and the work has already been 
done, you have it easy. The first time I used Newlib was on entirely 
in-house hardware for a ARM9 microcontroller that had no existing BSP 
package.

Clifford

von Mini Papatt (Guest)


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hi Richards,

i try to build my project with your syscalls file but when i have this 
error

[c]-IC:\PROGRA~1\yagarto\arm-none-eabi\include -I./inc src/syscalls.c -o 
src/syscalls.o
src/syscalls.c:12:19: fatal error: uart0.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make: *** [src/syscalls.o] Error 1[c]

Can you tell me where i could find this header file?? because i don't 
find it in the include folder of Yagarto

Best Regards

Mini,

von Martin Thomas (Guest)


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Please do not post in such an old thread. Next time open a new thread 
with your question.

The answer to your question: there are different methods to implement 
syscalls. The easiest method is to hard-code the input and output to the 
underlaying hardware directly into the syscall-function. Since the 
underlaying hardware is system-specific you have to look what functions 
the syscall-code expects (something like uart0putc oder uart0getc) and 
implement these functions so they access the uart of your controller. I 
don't know the syscall-implementations which came with Yagarto but as 
far as I know Michael Fischer provides example Applications for some 
controllers which you can use as template to adapt the code to your 
target.

An alternative method is to use a set of functions-pointers so the 
syscall-code itself is not hard-bound with a single device like uart0. 
An example how to do this can be found in the newlib-lpc code which is 
rather old but shows the basic idea.

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