Software Meeting: August 30, 2006
New Flight Computer boards
Biggest news: the new PowerPC boards arrived! Andrew finally managed to connect with the salesfolk at TQ Components and ordered two TQM5200 dev boards and an extra spare. Although they sent European power adapters, fortunately our Netgear switch had a compatible dongle, so we could power up one of the boards.
Even better, before the meeting ended Josh worked his magic and we were able to use UBoot to load and boot the supplied kernel. This was a lot further than we got with the old MEN-Micro board on the first day.
This is the dev board. At the rear are connectors for (from left to right) ethernet & USB, VGA, PS/2 mouse & keyboard, CAN, serial, and power. The 8x6 cm TQM5200 daughter board is at the lower-left above the PCI connector. The connector at the lower-right is for a Compact Flash card. At the extreme lower-left is a tiny blue reset button.
Not a "prototyp" sticker to be found. :) A bit of class instead: each of the dev boards was shipped inside a complimentary over-the-shoulder bike bag!
GPL/GPS
Andrew and Jonathan reviewed some more the of the GPL/GPS code.
Architecture and Infrastructure
Jamey and Ian also talked a bit about what we want in the new software architecture.
Goals
compile ARM code in a simulated environment
- separate high-level code from device specific code
- simulate devices
each component:
- test independently in a simulated environment
- test remainder of the system with that piece simulated
Continuous Integration
all components have tests
- TDD
all tests pass before checkin
- ?TinderBox? NO: big and crufty
- Cruise Control? (can integrate with Trac)
- jhbuild?
- issue: endianness
- use qemu-arm and qemu-ppc for tests
- use one of the PPC dev systems for auto testing checkins
Trac?
Starting out
new git repository!
automake
organization:
- NOT by language
single top-level makefile
- use makefile to group subprojects into build components
- problem: can't easily compile individual sub-projects
psas makefile.am include/ proj1/ proj2/ file.c testfile.c - unit tests test/ system tests test/ integration tests
what to do first?
new architecture
- keep threads?
- simplify: replace guts of sequencer with Kalman filter
Uncertainty work
Enhance Linux USB driver to support isochronous mode transfers
Other
Jamey made a fresh Software page, getting rid of lots of obsolete links. We're also using subpages and some ?MoinMoin macros to automatically collect the meeting minutes.
Keith and Eric showed up and hacked a reverse ssh connection to their workplace at Intel (Shhhh...) and hacked some more on font-config (newly imported into a git-repository).
Tim showed off his latest hack: a Forth system for his little ARM7 robot board. He can now define words on the fly over a bluetooth link, and he had a blinkenlights demo to show. He's prepping for a demo to the Portland robotics club on Saturday. It lives in http://svn.psas.pdx.edu/trunk/other/redDwarf/