c++

100 Articles

C++ Compiler Targets The Web

December 21, 2020 by 18 Comments

It is a common problem these days. You have a piece of code in C or C++. Maybe it is older code. Or maybe you prefer prototyping your ideas using C. But, inevitably, someone now wants your code to run in a Web browser. The options for making this happen have expanded quite a bit lately and one possibility is Cheerp, an open-source compiler that handles up to C++ 17 and can output to WebAssembly, JavaScript, or asm.js.

The compiler is free to use for GPLv2 projects. If you aren’t open yourself, it looks like you have to cut a deal to use Cheerp with its maker, Learning Technologies.

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Micropython On Microcontrollers

November 14, 2020 by 51 Comments

There are plenty of small microcontrollers available for all kinds of tasks, each one with its unique set of features and capabilities. However, not all of us want to spend time mucking about in C or assembly to learn the intricacies of each different chip. If you prefer the higher planes of Python instead, it’s not impossible to import Python on even the smallest of microcontrollers thanks to MicroPython, which [Rob] shows us in this project based on the ESP32.

[Rob] has been working on a small robot called Marty which uses an ESP32 as its brain, so the small microcontroller is already tasked with WiFi/Bluetooth communications and driving the motors in the robot. Part of the problem of getting Python to run on a platform like this is that MicroPython is designed to be essentially the only thing running on the device at any one point, but since the ESP32 is more powerful than the minimum requirements for MicroPython he wanted to see if he could run more than just Python code. He eventually settled on a “bottum-up” approach to build a library for the platform, rather than implementing MicroPython directly as a firmware image for the ESP32.

The blog post is an interesting take on running Python code on a small platform, and goes into some details with the shortcomings of MicroPython itself which [Rob] ended up working around for this project. He’s also released the source code for his work on his GitHub page. Of course, for a different approach to running Python and C on the same small processor, there are some libraries that accomplish that as well.

Write In PipelineC For FPGAs

August 16, 2020 by 15 Comments

The best thing about field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), when you have a massively parallel application, is that everything runs in parallel. The worst thing about FPGAs, when you need a lot of stuff to happen in sequence, is that everything runs in parallel. If you have a multi-step computation, for example, you need to break it up into chunks, figure out the timing between them, and make sure that each chunk clears before it is fed new data. This is pipelining, and taking care of all the low-level details yourself is one of the things that can sometimes make FPGA a four-letter word beginning with “F”.

[Julian Kemmerer]’s PipelineC is a C-like language that compiles down into VHDL so that you can use it in an FPGA, and it does the pipelining for you. He has examples of how you’d use it to construct a simple state machine, and after you’ve written a few hundred state machines the long way, you’ll know why this is a good idea.

PipelineC isn’t the only high level synthesis language out there, but it sits in an interesting place. It doesn’t take care of memory or define interfaces. It just takes care of pipelining. We haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks like it would be interesting for moderately complex projects, where the mechanics of pipeline signalling is a hassle, but you don’t require the deluxe treatment. Check it out, and if you like it, let us (and [Julian], natch) know.

If you want to dive head-first into pipelining, give [Al Williams]’ two-part mini-series a look.

Pipeline graphic CC BY-SA 3.0 by CBurnett

Gaming In Different Languages

July 7, 2020 by 2 Comments

One of the perks of using older hardware is its comparative simplicity and extensive documentation. After years or decades of users programming on a platform, the amount of knowledge available for it can become extensive. This is certainly the case with the 6502 microprocessor, used in old Apple computers and some video game systems from the ’80s. The extensive amount of resources available make it a prime candidate in exploring various programming languages, and their advantages and disadvantage.

This project looks into those differences using a robot game, which has been programmed four different ways in three languages. [Joey] created the game in Python first and then began to port it to the 65C02, a CMOS variant of the 6502. The first iteration is its assembly language, and then a second iteration with optimized assembly code. From there, he ports it to C and then finally to Forth. Each version of the game is available to play in a browser using an emulator to run the 6502 hardware.

Since the games run in the browser, other tools are available to examine the way the game runs in each language. Registers can be viewed in real time, as well as the values stored in the memory. It’s an interesting look at an old piece of hardware and of its inner workings. For an even deeper dive into the 6502, it’s possible to build a working computer on breadboards using one.

The Seedy World Of Message Serialization

June 10, 2020 by 24 Comments

Look, I’ve been there too. First the project just prints debug information for a human in nice descriptive strings that are easy to understand. Then some tool needs to log a sensor value so the simple debug messages gain structure. Now your debug messages {{look like : this}}. This is great until a second sensor is added that uses floats instead of ints. Now there are sprinklings of even more magic characters between the curly braces. A couple days later and things are starting to look Turing complete. At some point you look up and realize, “I need a messaging serialization strategy”. Well you’ve come to the right place! Continue reading “The Seedy World Of Message Serialization” →

Writing Android Apps In C, No Java Required

May 13, 2020 by 26 Comments

Older Android devices can be had for a song, and in many cases are still packing considerable computational power. With built in networking, a battery, and a big touch screen, they could easily take the place of a Raspberry Pi and external display in many applications. As it so happens, Google has made it very easy to develop your own Android software. There’s only one problem: you’ve got to do it in Java.

Looking to get away from all that bloat and overhead, [CNLohr] set out to see what it would take to get 100% C code running on an Android device. After collecting information and resources from the deepest and darkest corners of the Internet, he found out that the process actually wasn’t that bad. He’s crafted a makefile which can be used to get your own C program up and running in seconds.

We mean that literally. As demonstrated in the video after the break, [CNLohr] is able to compile, upload, and run a C Android program in less than two seconds with a single command. This rapid development cycle allows you to spend more time on actually getting work done, as you can iterate through versions of your code almost as quickly as if you were running them on your local machine.

[CNLohr] says you’ll still need to have Google’s Android Studio installed, so it’s not as if this is some clean room implementation. But once it’s installed, you can just call everything from his makefile and never have to interact with it directly. Even if you don’t have any problem with the official Android development tools, there’s certainly something to be said for being able to write a “Hello World” that doesn’t clock in at multiple-megabytes.

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C#, The Language For All Platforms – Now Including Windows 3.11 And DOS

February 9, 2020 by 31 Comments

The Microsoft .NET framework has been with us in one form or another since the millennium, and though it has remained largely the preserve of the Microsoft universe, it has found its way since then through a variety of implementations to other platforms including MacOS and GNU/Linux. In Microsoft terms though its history goes back only as far as Windows 98, earlier MS operating systems remain off-limits.

Just a glimmer of .NET in DOS and Windows 3.11 comes courtesy of [Michal Strehovský], who has successfully compiled .net C# code for both Windows 3.11 and DOS. An in-depth explanation comes courtesy of [Scott Hanselman], and it involves some tricks spanning the decades since the early 1990s. The .NET Core compiler’s object files can be fed into the linker that shipped with an ancient version of Microsoft’s C++ compiler, which when used with Microsoft’s Win32s compatibility layer that brought some of Windos NT’s APIs to the 16-bit OS, allows C# from 2020 to run as though it were 1992 again. Meanwhile the DOS version uses .NET Core’s ability to produce self-contained executables along with some very significant tricks to pare down the size of the finished program from many megabytes to an eventual DOS-suitable 27k. Remember the apocryphal Bill Gates quote, that “640k should be enough for anyone“, that refers to the maximum memory available to DOS without extra memory-extending tricks.

Neither piece of software is especially useful, and we can’t see a rush of C# coders to these new platforms. But we applaud him for his ingenuity, and getting old hardware to do new tricks is right up our alley. It’s certainly dredged up a few memories from back in the day for us. Meanwhile we’ve featured .NET in a few projects over the years, most recently on an FPGA.