C compilers for 68hc11?

[John S Gwynne]

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   In message <199410171827.NAA03863 at mail.utexas.edu> , you write:
 
| What is the best, if any, C compiler for the 6811?
| 
| I remeber from the miniboard documentation that a
| company called Dunfield Development Systems, sells
| a 6811 C compiler called 'Micro C' but I have
| not heard of anybody actually using it.

FYI, I've ftp'd the file(s) to build the Coactive gcc port, but have not yet
built it. It's just another set of processor description files; i don't
expect any problems. the beta release now uses the AS6811 assembler and
ASLINKER (part of the distibution). I've atached the 'announce' 
information below:

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Greetings,

We are happy to announce a beta release of the 68HC11 port of the gnu gcc
compiler version 2.5.8 done by Coactive Aesthetics. This is an upgrade from
the alpha release we had done one year ago. 

Major changes in this release are:

	o Changed the machine description and target machine files to
	  (correctly) generate QI and HI mode instructions. This means
	  that the generic compiler code will work with no changes. It
	  also means the 4 byte long support (using SI mode) would be
	  easier to add.

	o The target machine file was changed to save and restore the
	  "pseudo" registers when function calls are made. While this
	  will increase code space usage, it does allow the optimizer to
	  work correctly, and allows for function recursion (which would
	  not work in the older version).

	o Updated some of the instructions in the machine description
	  file to fix bugs, and added a function call for the multiply
	  code.

	o It now uses the AS6811 assembler and ASLINK linker distributed
	  by Alan R. Baldwin of Kent State University. I have modified
	  the source (which is included in the release) to allow for
	  globals symbols up to 32 bytes in length, and have changed the
	  command line argument processing to allow the gcc front end to
	  use these programs directly.

The compiler still has the following "problems":

	o The is no librarian or support for linking with libraries. I
	  have changed the linker to just ignore the -L and -l flags (if
	  any) that are passed in. In looking at the relocatable file
	  format, it shouldn't be that difficult to add support for
	  libraries.

	o It doesn't handle floating point in any manner (any existence
	  of floating point in the C code will crash the compiler). I
	  decided not to take on the job of adding dummy instructions in
	  the machine description file which would raise a somewhat
	  reasonable error if floating point is seen.

    	o Currently all longs are still TWO bytes. Since nobody that I
	  have contacted attaches any importance to this, I doubt that it
	  will ever be done.

	o I have not attempted to compile it on a MSDOS system. Given my
	  experience in doing this with the alpha release, I doubt that I
	  ever will try it again. If you have a 386/486 system, you may
	  want to look into installing a free Unix system (Linux or
	  386bsd) to run the cross compiler.

The port was written using the GCB11 Network Microcontroller board that
is manufactured by Coactive Aesthetics. However, there is no assumptions
and/or hardcode values within the compiler which would prevent the
compiler from working on any 68HC11 board. More details on the can be
found in the README file that is part of the distribution.

The source for the 68HC11 specific files and the assembler/linker can be
found at /pub/coactive/gcc-6811-beta.tar.gz on netcom.com (The ".gz"
suffix indicates that it is in "gzip" format). You should also get the
original distribution for gcc-2.5.8 from your favorite archive site.

Any questions, bug reports, or porting comments/questions should be sent
to gcc at coactive.com.

Thanks,

Otto

--
Otto Lind                  Coactive Aesthetics
otto at coactive.com          P.O. Box 425967, San Francisco, CA 94142
netcom!coactive!otto       voice:(415)626-5152    fax:(415)626-6320


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                                       John S Gwynne
                                          Gwynne.1 at osu.edu
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