| Monday - 6/23/2003 |
Progress |
|
Occasionally life hits you with various things and you don't get to do
the things you want to do, like work on that free software project. I've
been doing various things for DevKit Advance for the past month, but
nothing to warrant a new release just yet.
I have been making a lot of posts to the forum at gbadev.org. If you have a
question, you can post it there and there is a high possibility that
me or some other knowledgable person will answer it. Of course,
you are still free to e-mail me personally (fenix AT io DOT com).
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| Thursday - 5/15/2003 |
Anime Central |
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There will not be a new beta this week because I am going to the Anime
Central anime convention in Chicago.
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| Friday - 5/9/2003 |
DevKit Advance Release 5 Beta 3 |
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DevKit Advance Release 5 Beta 3 is now available for download.
Several bug fixes have been applied, it contains many new features, and
other improvements. It is mainly lacking documentation. I really want
to talk about those features, but without documentation I would feel
guilty for it ^_^
There is a new package, agb-win-insight.zip, which contains the
gdb/insight source level debugger and arm simulator.
The crtls, example, and testsuite directories have been added. You can
build the projects in these directories using 'make all'. Doing a 'make
install' in crtls will apply any changes you made to the crt0.s
In the example directory, currently there is only the xframe library
which will become a framework on which all the examples will be based
on. Currently it contains a simple tty which hooks into printf. This
library is used by the testsuite project to output results.
The testsuite exercises every feature of DevKit Advance. In lieu of
better documentation (which is pending), you can examine the tests.
For beta 4, I am going to try and get the documentation caught up with
the implementation.
NOTE: The interrupt service routine provided in the file isr.S is just a
rough draft and has never been tested. I probably should have added a
#error directive to the source before releasing it to warn people.
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| Friday - 5/2/2003 |
Two Weeks? |
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I knew I would be in trouble if I set a release date! Beta 3 will be out
soon. It will most likely be a Monday release as usual. I got
distracted by a lot of things which I wanted to add to the DevKit and
forgot that I really only wanted Release 5 to be equivalent to Release
4, but based on Mingw instead of Cygwin. So, I've actually been working
on release 6, but forgot to do release 5 ^_^
|
| 3/31/2003 |
Second Beta |
|
Beta 2 contains several bug fixes and is as complete as DevKit Advance
R4. For that reason I feel comfortable recommending that people
upgrade. There will be one more beta before the final version of R5.
That beta will include the Insight/GDB debugger and a low level library
for taking full advantage of DevKit Advance. If you are not
interested in those, then you can wait until the final release 5,
which should be in about 2 weeks.
A Linux version will follow as soon as possible, but rest assured the
final version will be available at the same time as the final Windows
version.
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| 3/24/2003 |
DevKit Advance Release 5 Beta for Windows |
|
I am glad to present you with DevKit
Advance Release 5 Beta for Windows
This is a BETA release and you need to respect that. Install this along
side your existing installation of devkit advance and make sure that
everything still works for you. Tell me if you have any problems.
For best results, install in the c:\devkitadv-r5-beta directory and use
it by launching a cmd shell using the shortcut provided in that
directory. If you want, copy that shortcut to your desktop or quickbar
(it is very convenient!)
If you want to install it somewhere else you will have to edit the
rc.bat file which is used to setup paths.
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| 2/13/2003 |
SourceForge |
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The project has moved to SourceForge in order to make it easier for
developers to colaborate and make progress and to unify versions created
for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X into one effort.
The project summary page is here.
Please register with SourceForge and post a message to the forums.
Getting a forum started is a chicken/egg problem, so do not let the empty
forums scare you away.
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| 2/13/2003 |
GBA Wiki |
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There is an experimental method of creating documentation for the GBA
posted here.
Anyone can contribute documentation without even having to register. Try
it out!
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| 7/13/2002 |
New Linux Version |
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I suddenly remembered that the Linux Version of the
dev-kit is now GPL compliant.
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| 6/4/2002 |
Slashdot |
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Got Slashdotted
today. Well, sort of. Someone submitted a link to a Mac OS X version which I was unaware of.
I'll link it here. Hopefully that
will help all of you that where asking for it.
Its amazing how inaccurate some of the comments posted in the Slashdot
story about GBA development are. I don't know if its because GBA-DEV is
so esoteric, or if the one ton grain of salt I already take with Slashdot
is not big enough ^_^
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| 5/20/2002 |
GPL Compliance - Round 2 |
|
No real changes, except now you can take a look at the source used by
Cygwin to build make, bash, and other tools that I included for your
convenience in agb-core. I also put the file COPYING into all the files
so that you too can learn what it takes to have (and keep) the previlege
of distributing GNU programs as binaries.
If you are running a mirror, please get the files off of the Netherlands
server and update because even though I kept the same name, the files are
slightly different now. I think you should probably also get the GNU
source code, because although the FSF didn't say anythig about it, I am
sure they will soon tell me that everyone has to distribute all the source
and binaries.
FREE TIP! Before you start a project with GNU source code, consult
with someone who has done this before successfully. Even if you are
really smart (like me :P) you will probably get something wrong and get a
call (e-mail) from Mr. RMS himself to set you straight.
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| 5/19/2002 |
Temporary GNU/Linux Version Removal |
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Another round of GPL compliance has caused me to remove the GNU/Linux version
until I can produce a version which complies with the GPL. I think the
best way for me to do this would be to create a version for GNU/Linux myself
(the old GNU/Linux version was produced by a contributor). There is a blank
partition on my harddrive just waiting to have GNU/Linux slapped on it. It
may take a little bit, as I am in the middle of a move. I'll get
everything updated once I am settled.
Clarification: Added 5/20/2002
The source was removed so that I could either A) Contact the person who
contributed it and have them give me the source code for the binaries, or
B) Create the next version of the Dev-Kit which will have a unified source
for both GNU/Linux and Cygwin.
Until either of these happen, I cannot legally distribute the GNU/Linux version.
|
| 4/5/2002 |
GPL Compliance |
|
I uploaded the patched source code to the binutils and GCC in order to
comply with the letter of the GPL. They are called
agb-binutils-2.11.2.tar.bz2 and agb-gcc-3.0.2.tar.bz2. My makefile still
works with only with the official distribution, but if you know how to
build GCC and binutils, then you can build from the patched source by
configuring for target arm-agb-elf. Please don't ask me anything else
about building from these sources, because I prefer to build using my
makefile + patches.
|
| 10/29/2001 |
Quick Release |
| agb-win-core-r5.zip has been
quickly put in place to fix problems with Windows XP. Sorry about the
mix up.
|
| 10/29/2001 |
Windows XP Troubles |
|
I have heard reports that the new release doesn't actually work with
Windows XP, but I've also heard reports that it does. It seems that I may
not have gotten the updated cygwin DLL files into the distribution.
Expect a agb-win-core-r5 soon to fix the problem if its my fault. This
may also explain why I could not get things to work in Windows Me without
that patch.
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| 10/28/2001 |
Release 4 |
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Release 4 is mostly minor changes. It should work with the newly launched
Windows XP. It also includes the newly released gcc 3.0.2. To
avoid confusion, please note that I am skipping release 3 in order to
syncronize the release numbers of all the packages.
This release works out of the box with WinNT, Win2k, and WinXP, but you
will have to download an additional file to get it to work with Win9x and
WinMe. This is because of the "Virtual Memory Exhausted" error. The "fix"
causes some projects, those that use C files to include binary data, to
use way too much memory to compile.
People using Win9x and WinMe are stuck with this problem, but I am not
going to punish everyone, so Win9x/Me users will have to download
agb-win-patch-r4.zip which contains replacements for the files that have
the problem. Until Cygwin fixes the problem, I suggest that Win9x/Me
users switch to XP or 2000. Of course, after you do that, you won't want
to switch back ^_^
After unzipping the other packages, unzip the patch zip over it. Just
so that no one gets confused, if you are using Windows NT, Windows
2000, or Windows XP you DO NOT have to download the patch. If you are
using Windows 98 or Windows Me then you DO have to download the patch.
I don't know about Windows 95, but I really don't care.
Here is the Changelog:
- removed libiberty.a from the newlib package
- changed bin2o.sh to just bin2o
- got latest CygWin DLL so that WinXP and WinMe problems can be solved
- fixed bug where sbrk (and therefore malloc) would allocate more memory that is available
- changed back to using the default garbage collector, should speed up compilation a little
- added the utilities make, rm, sh, pwd and echo to cygwin package
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| 10/25/2001 |
New Layout |
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I have reorganized the site in order to serve you better. Yes, I did this
just for YOU.
Expect a new release tommorow to account for the new
version of gcc (3.0.2) and Windows XP.
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