CeGCC / MingW32CE Ebuild for Gentoo Linux

It's probably safe to say that there are not many Gentoo Linux users out there who are actively developing WinCE applications. However, today I compiled my first "Hello, WinCE World!" app, messagebox and all, using the compiler from the CeGCC project. CeGCC-0.51.0 is based on fairly recent tools (e.g. gcc-4.1.0), which is a big bonus.

Although seeing a "Hello, World!" dialog in Windows CE surely made my day, the CeGCC compiler is really only a means to get Linux running on  a certain unnameable portable computing device for work. I'm using the HaRET bootloader which has shown promise for many others who have ported Linux to mobile or embedded devices that run WinCE. 

Just in case there are any Gentoo users out there who would also like to install the compiler using Portage, I have included Ebuilds for CeGCC and MingW32CE that install the i686/Linux toolchain components. Just to clarify, for those who are compiling applications for Win32, or people who want to hack HaRET, use the MingW32CE toolchain. For those who are interested in porting GNU software to ARM/Win32, use CeGCC.

You can download the overlay in tarball format here, but I would suggest using layman, just like for my other overlays.

The ultimate goal of my current project is to have an industrial handheld compuer / scanner that runs Android, and so far its been coming along very well.

New Overlay for Syscomp Design

I recently used my digital storage oscilloscope and  function generator for the first time since retrieving all of my electronics from storage after returning from Germany. These are really handy devices for examining low-frequency (pre-micro) electronics. After I wrote a couple of ebuilds to install the Open Instrumentation Project software, I thought I'd make the ebuilds publicly available.

Syscomp Design is incidentally run by a former professor of mine from Ryerson, Peter Hiscocks. I thoroughly enjoyed his course on microprocessor / microelectronic interfacing, and luckily did so before he went into early retirement. On a somewhat unrelated note, we're both part of the TLUG :) It's good to see that Prof. Hiscocks is keeping himself busy these days - Syscomp just released a new device that obseletes both of the units I bought 3 years ago! Although he mentioned that the older oscilloscope circuit has more dedicated storage space and time resolution.

If anyone would like to check out the overlay using layman, then you should be able to do it with the following command

layman -o http://virtb.visibleassets.com:2080/layman.conf -a syscomp

After that, you should be able to do the following (as root)

for i in dso101 cgr101 wgm101; do
echo "sci-electronics/$i" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
done
emerge -av1 dso101 cgr101 wgm101

I've contributed two patches (one for wgm and another cgr) which allow for more flexible storage of the program files in /usr/lib.

Enjoy!

Bin-Ebuilds for Grails, Groovy, Gant, & Eclipse-3.4

Eclipse-3.4 has been out for some time. Unfortunately, the Gentoo-Java maintainer was devaway for a while and couldn't make an ebuild to build Eclipse-3.4 from source. Hence Gentoo bug #229609.

I say "to hell with building Eclipse from source" ... especially not for me, being an EEE PC user :)

For those who would just like the binary package for Eclipse 3.4 (eclipse-sdk-bin), and for those who may also be interested in groovy-bin, grails-bin, or gant-bin, try this out:

echo "dev-portage/eclipse-sdk-bin" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
PORTAGE_BINHOST="http://virtb.visibleassets.com:2080/geeentoo/packages/All" \
FEATURES="getbinpkg" \
emerge -Kav1 =dev-util/eclipse-sdk-bin-3.4

For installing dev-java/grails-bin, dev-java/groovy-bin, or dev-java/gant-bin simply substitute the package name in the commands above.

Note: dev-java/grails-bin already contains precompiled Gant and Groovy jars, in order to run grails, but it doesn't support Groovy or Gant from the command line. If you need a command-line Groovy or Gant, then install groovy-bin or gant-bin as well.

As usual, you can download any of my Portage overlays with the command below (requires app-portage/layman).

layman -o http://virtb.visibleassets.com:2080/layman.conf -L -v --nocolor | less

Then use the '/' search function of the pager application 'less' to look for the string 'virtb' and you should be able to see my repositories. I guess for security purposes, and the fact that mine are not official gentoo overlays, they are not displayed by default unless you specify the '-v' option to layman.

You can add the overlay with

layman -o http://virtb.visibleassets.com:2080/layman.conf -a [overlayName]

Currently, overlayName can be one of "vuze-bin, eclipse, grails-groovy-gant, eee". If you'd like to check out any of my other overlays (mainly for ARM development), try using http://vaiprime.visibleassets.com/~cfriedt/layman.conf .