Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!nuzba.szn.dk!pnx.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail
From: David Kuehling <dvdkhlng@gmx.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Gforth-EC, the underappreciated embedded Forth
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:07:36 +0100
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <87fwen62fr.fsf@snail.Pool>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de ipke9JkAfzGateWguuplgwOuf2ixBpAr1y5D2acJ4m9srygi8=
Cancel-Lock: sha1:RgLHBudYeFUbZ5zR5DqtHV+oe0Y=
User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.3 (gnu/linux)
Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.forth:9373

Hi,

I've been having a look at Gforth-EC lately, that's the embedded
cross-compiled Forth support that has been included with Gforth all the
time, but as it's well hidden and pretty undocumented, I guess most
people wouldn't have noticed it.

Now it turns out it only takes a few commands to generate a usable 8086
gforth-ec executable, running in dosbox (i.e. emulated under Linux):

From the Gforth source directory, run:

./build-ec 8086
mv kernl-8086.fi gforthec.com  # need to rename for dosbox to execute it
dosbox gforthec.com

And voila, it prints the standard Gforth welcome message.  Some testing:

here .  14334 ok
unused u.  47162 ok
words 
[..] 
dup lit branch >r r> c! c@ (emit) (key) lastkey and xor + rp!
rp@ sp! sp@ ! @ ?branch execute ;s  ok     

More Forth-code to cross-compile can be added in arch/8086/prims.fs.  

Now 8086 code isn't really very interesting to most modern computer
users, but 8086 isn't the only architecture supported by gforth-ec.  I
can successfully run build-ec for 8086, r8c and misc.  Other targets
that seem to have been supported at some time are m68k, shboom, 6502,
c165 and 4stack, but with current Gforth-CVS compilation fails for
those.

Adding support for new target is not too difficult.  Currently I'm
trying to make it work for the LatticeMico32 CPU (the Milkymist SoC).

cheers,

David
-- 
GnuPG public key: http://dvdkhlng.users.sourceforge.net/dk.gpg
Fingerprint: B17A DC95 D293 657B 4205  D016 7DEF 5323 C174 7D40