[CCC DEV] Move to Git

Matt Jadud matt at jadud.com
Sun Sep 30 16:35:54 BST 2012


Hi all,

I'm going to begin experimenting with the move to Git, picking up from
Christian's initial explorations. This is, in some ways, about my own
personal goals, but I don't know who else is relying on the toolchain
(and in what ways) at the moment.

1. I would like it to be easier to fork and explore modifications to
the TVM, specifically with respect to power management and FFIs.

2. One of my students last year explored porting Carl's multicore work
into the TVM; including this will be more invasive; it would, again,
be nice to have an easy way to bring it in.

3. I really want to get regular builds set up again. I am going to be
relying on the TVM more in the future for embedded work, and making it
easy to generate a build on several virtual or physical machines is a
must. Right now, I don't think we could do a build and release if we
wanted to.

4. I would like to consider moving our editor framework, or improving
the one we've got. Editra (pure Python) and/or Gedit (Python
extensions) are both possibilities in my mind. (Obviously, more
conversation is needed before anything happens... and this is
relatively low on my list.) However, we have work to do to support the
Leonardo (if we want to), so we might as well think about it.

5. I'd like to bring a visual environment online. My experiments with
Flow (http://craftofelectronics.org/software/flow.html) have gone
well; it is possible for students to plug in an Arduino, drag a few
blocks out, and get a program running without any deep understandings
of programming. Moving to a more "native" approach would be nice
(leveraging Jon's work), and implies that a Python-based
editing/plugin environment could mean a shared set of code for talking
to the Arduino between a textual and visual environment.

6. I would like to support the Teensy 3.0, because a low-cost,
ARM-based platform (with more flash, RAM, and megahertz) would be
extremely useful in some cases.

Most of these are not "today" projects, but I thought I'd let people
know what I'm thinking/up to, and where I want to go. I am currently
collaborating with a colleague on air quality sensing, and was (again)
pleased with how clean the embedded firmware comes out when you have a
process-oriented language underneath you. Keeping the tools in good
shape (so I and/or others can continue to explore this environment in
on real-world platforms) is my goal.

Cheers,
Matt



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