Note: Wingston, mentioned in earlier postings, has become so successful that he has pulled his blog.
Developing for Linux on FriendlyARM boards.
A typical development setup has a Mini/Micro/Tiny of your choice with
power supply and cables from the SDK accessory kit. Your Mini is
connected to a Linux PC by the serial cable (often to a USB to serial
converter) and an Ethernet cable. If you have an Ethernet hub, use a
regular Cat5 cable from Mini to hub. If not, use the crossover cable
from the kit and connect to your PC. The hub is more convenient so that
you can use the Internet at the same time without jumping through hoops.
The USB cable is used in a few special situations.
A great way to
do fast development with the least hassle, is with NFS. NFS, or Network
File System, allows part of your PC hard drive to be mounded by the
Mini over Ethernet. When you change a script or configuration file or
compile something on a shared directory, it is seen by the Mini as being
on its own hard drive. There is no burning of NAND or transferring SD
cards.
Your PC will need your favorite Linux - FriendlyARM uses
Fedora in some of the user manuals, a lot of people use Ubuntu, and some
prefer the more Spartan Debian. Debian has the advantage that anything
in the repository is available for both x86 and ARM. The pending release
of a Debian customized for Mini210 makes this appealing. You will need
the "tools", the GNU compilers and linker, GDB for debugging, and and
perhaps an IDE like Eclipse. Old school Linux users might scorn the IDE,
but most of us relative noobs can make good use of it. Single stepping
through lines of code or by machine instructions is simple with a proper
setup of Eclipse. If you are new to this and wonder what all thjose
special directories are for in Linux, here is a very handy reference.
Your
first step if you don't have Linux, is choosing the "Distro" or
distribution you want to use. Will you put it on a PC or laptop of it's
own? Or set up dual boot with Windows? Or maybe use VirtualBox or VMWare
to install a virtual machine? Check the forum at www.friendlyarm.net to
see what people are doing and what systems are working best. A favorite
around here is a bare bones quad core AMD at 3GHz+ with 4 or 8 GBytes
of RAM. We watch for really good sale prices on bare bones and 20"
displays at places like Tiger Direct or NewEgg. If you luck out, you can
get dual monitors (with stand) and a great box for less than $500. You
hardly need this if you have time to wait for long compiles. After all
the Mini210S itself is more powerfull than a great PC of 10 years ago.
Can
you develop for the Mini210/S directly on the Mini210/S? Yes you can.
The Mini210S can run Debian Squeeze, the current Debian for desktops,
and that means anything else in the Debian repository. A new release with drivers for I/O on the Mini/Tiny210 systems will be ready soon.
There is plenty of RAM on the Mini210S and we like to run Debian from a
uSD card so we have up to 32 GBytes of flash. 36 if you count the 4
GBytes on board. If you choose this method, spend the extra for a Class
10 SD. They write much faster. A very simple and powerful way to develop directly on your card is with Python. Once Debian is loaded, add
USB mouse and keyboard, connected to the Internet, and just
You
can even use the HDMI on one of the 210's with a large display or use a
7" 5" or 4.3" LCD. See if IDLE or Eric will load for a Python IDE.
