Various software from ROOL site not BB compatible

I’m attempting to build RISC OS for the OMAP3. I was surprised to see firstly that UnTarBZ2 will only run correctly on the BeagleBoard if alignment exceptions are turned off. Interestingly, it doesn’t just bomb out; instead it reports that it can’t create the tar file, although there is no other good reason why it can’t. Doing nothing more than turning alignment exceptions off makes it work.

Building RISC OS with alignment exceptions on does cause a crash straight away. Turn them off and it appears to run fine. (It’s running as I type, so checking the results will be a later step!

It’s possible one or more of the utilities within UnTarBZ2 was built using tools pre-dating the ones that build ARMv7-safe code by default, especially as some of those tools came from third party sites, such as riscos.info. I will look into this and see if it can be updated.

As for a lot of the pre-built stuff, this is all pretty crusty and well overdue for being updated and rebuilt with the latest tools from the latest sources. That’s on my ToDo list.

I would appreciate a clean-up of the compiler, too.

Will it be possible to get the updated version? I bought the compiler this year especially for using it on the beagleboard and I think it is rather bad to be forced to use it with align exceptions turned off.

Will it be possible to get the updated version?

"...online upgrades for owners of recent toolchains to save the cost and effort of shipping physical upgrades CDs – although the effort required on the website to achieve that is considerable too. How much interest would there be in such an option?"

So with Rob and me we’re 2 already. Maybe we could just get a copy of the inflicted binaries then – should be less work that changing the website.

So with Rob and me we’re 2 already. Maybe we could just get a copy of the inflicted binaries then – should be less work that changing the website.

Are you sure that it’s a problem with the compiler, and not with one of the other tools (e.g. egrep)? I’m fairly certain that the version released in April 2009 was meant to have been recompiled to be ARMv7 compatible.

Are you sure that it’s a problem with the compiler, and not with one of the other tools?

That might be. I saw the C/C++ toolset as a whole up to now and from the beginning I had to switch off alignment exceptions. But you are totally right in hinting that some more detailed information will be helpful :-). I’ll start a RISCOS build on harddisc anyway to see if there are issues with my newly added sata usb interface and I’ll post the results here asap.

Ok, had problems building RISCOS, but when trying the SD-Card project, the command line

cc -c -depend !Depend -IC: -throwback -L22-S22-L41 -o .o.fat .c.fat

Norcroft RISC OS ARM C vsn 5.67 [21 Apr 2009] Internal error: abort on data transfer at &000677AC

and additional Postmortem info…

So I can confirm that norcroft CC is indeed not Beagleboard compatible. With alignment exceptions turned off it works. And it is the April version.

Are you sure that it’s a problem with the compiler, and not with one of the other tools (e.g. egrep)?

Well I also have the problem with egrep / grep when trying to build RISCOS. I wanted to seek through the forum this evening ;-) to find out more. It seems to be linked with the SharedCLibrary somehow.

Edit: Well I found it. Making me wonder how I built it the first time without realising the pitfall…?

So I can confirm that norcroft CC is indeed not Beagleboard compatible. With alignment exceptions turned off it works. And it is the April version.

Yes, you’re right – I’ve just found this post from Ben that suggests that it wasn’t until around July ‘09 that Norcroft was fully ARMv7-safe :(

Hopefully the release announcement for the new mega-bugfixed version isn’t far off.

Well, we’ve released the new toolchain CD but I’ve not had a chance to address the issues with UnTarBZ2 yet.

Well Steve, you just got me convinced to get that new CD. Money has been transferred so it should be coming to my mailbox soon :-)