A89: TI-GCC IDE issues
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A89: TI-GCC IDE issues
Two major issues with the most recent TI-GCC IDE (included in TI-GCC 0.7)
which I think are important to bring up on this list:
1.) This version of the IDE is very, very unstable with syntax highlighting
turned ON. It's too bad, because I was starting to like it. I often have
crashes when deleting lines, and I've got a repeatable one now.
Open TI-GCC. Open the automatix project file (the source is included in the
zip). With syntax highlighting ON, scroll down a bit in the "Main Program"
file to line 37 and you'll see one line that starts with "long," followed by
a blank line and two more lines beginning with "long." Move the cursor to
the blank line, and press del - whammo, crash.
You cause another, similar crash with the same source file. This time, go
to the "Interrupts" file. See the blank line on line 25? Delete it.
Ooops!
If only the IDE were written in C, I'd love to be able to fix that and add
some features myself. . . =(
2.) [big thanks to Wrath on this one, since I'm too lazy to look up these
facts myself)
Why is the IDE default - and most people's code - using -O2 optimization
instead of -O3? According to the GCC docs, -O3 turns on all optimizations
that don't sacrifice size for speed. The majot difference is function
inlining, which is automatic on -O3 but not done on -O2.
Looking at the Automatix source, using -O2 is gonna make horrible
performance debts. Look at this code:
void AddByteMask(byte *Ptr, byte Mask)
{
*Ptr = *Ptr | Mask;
}
The compiler is actually doing this as a subroutine! This code should
probably be hardcoded in rather than used as a fuction, or at the very least
used as a macro. But GCC isn't even inline'ing this - ouch!
That's my rant for the day. . . feel free to comment.
-Scott
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