Kuro, MediaMVP, TiVo, TeraStation -- and us?

[Gregor Richards]

Georg Wrede wrote:
> 
> 
> Gregor Richards wrote:
> 
>> Georg Wrede wrote:
>>
>>> While on the IBM Developer Works site, I stumbled on an interesting 
>>> article about the new breed of computing devices (IMHO, soon to flood 
>>> the world, in numbers exceeding both PCs and cellphones).
>>>
>>> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lobmediamvp.html
>>>
>>> Basically, these are VCR cassette size units containing a 
>>> single-board computer with Linux. They seem to be (again, IMHO) 
>>> becoming the new platform-of-choice for garage firms developing 
>>> totally new applications for the digital world. (Gee, sounds like I'm 
>>> selling them!)
>>>
>>> Many new firms use these as-is in home heating automation, various 
>>> set-top appliances, for automotive control, security systems, 
>>> robotics, toys, point-of-sale terminals, self service trade show 
>>> stands, firewalls, handheld bookkeeping or measuring devices, 
>>> computers for pre-schoolers, etc.
>>>
>>> As for myself, for the better part of this year I've been looking for 
>>> something smaller than a real PC, because I need to deploy several 
>>> computers throughout the factory floor, and for this PCs get clunky 
>>> and waste a lot of room, money, and maintenance resources. Some of 
>>> the choices I've eyed at are:
>>>
>>> http://www.armkits.com/Product/sbc2410III.asp
>>> http://www.armkits.com/Product/STDV710A.asp
>>> http://www.harerod.de/centipad/html/centipad.html (in German)
>>>
>>> Now, what has held me back so far is, I definitely want to continue 
>>> all my development in D! <putting hand behind ear, waiting for 
>>> intense applause and roar from the audience/>
>>>
>>> With the GCC toolchain that comes default with most of these, one 
>>> would assume that GDC is a viable alternative.
>>>
>>> Opinions?
>>
>>
>>
>> GDC is certainly a viable alternative. With ARM, you're already set. 
>> configure-make-install and you're done. Cross-compilation is easy.
> 
> 
> Excellent!
> 
>> Seems like a non-problem to me.
> 
> 
> What sort of executable sizes can I expect from GDC for ARM? (Last time 
> I tried, DMD Hello World was monstrous compared to C on Windows and 
> Linux.) With limited space this may become an issue when one has to have 
> a bunch of subtask-specific executables. (Which one would have when 
> doing stuff "in the spirit of Unix". I wouldn't want to resort to 
> Busy-Box like binary crunching methods with virtually separate 
> executables.)
> 

Huge, unless you employ one very simple trick: Make libgphobos a shared 
object file.

It won't do it for you, unfortunately, but you can do it manually:

1) Install gdc
2) Go into gdc's source directory, in the phobos directory, and make 
distclean
3) CFLAGS=-fPIC DFLAGS=-fPIC ./configure --prefix=<prefix> && make all 
install
4) cd <prefix>/lib
5) ld -shared -soname=libgphobos.so.0 --whole-archive libgphobos.a 
--no-whole-archive -o libgphobos.so.0.0.0
6) for i in libgphobos.so.0.0 libgphobos.so.0 libgphobos.so ; do ln -s 
libgphobos.so.0.0.0 $i ; done
7) There is no step 7

(This is from memory, no guarantee that it's exactly right)

Now, when you link GDC, you'll actually link against the shared 
libgphobos instead of the static one. The vast majority of the size in 
output binaries is Phobos, so without that weight, they suddenly become 
quite small.

Of course, libgphobos.so.0.0.0 itself is fairly hefty, but there's only 
one of it :)

  - Gregor Richards

PS: BIG FAT NOTE: This can't be done with DMD. DMD's output cannot be 
used to make shared object files. Since DMD can't be used on ARM it's 
irrelevent to this discussion, but if anybody's peeking in ... go 
download GDC to get .so support ;)