C/C++ News - Page 15 of 15 - CNX Software

October 17, 2011October 17, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) Compiler Infrastructure

The Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) is a compiler and toolchain infrastructure, written in C++, designed for compile-time, link-time, run-time, and “idle-time” optimization of programs written in arbitrary programming languages. Originally implemented for C/C++, LLVM is now used with a variety programming languages such as Python, Ruby and may others. Code in the LLVM project is licensed under the “UIUC” BSD-Style license. LLVM can be used to replace and/or supplement the GNU tools such as gcc, g++, gdb, etc… LLVM now consists of a number of different sub-projects including: The LLVM Core libraries provide a source- and target-independent optimizer, along with code generation support for many popular CPUs. These libraries are built around a well specified code representation known as the LLVM intermediate representation (“LLVM IR”). The LLVM Core libraries are well documented, and it is particularly easy to invent your own language (or port an existing compiler) to use […]

October 3, 2011August 15, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Cross Compiling Boost C++ Libraries for ARM

Boost provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries. Ten Boost libraries are already included in the C++ Standards Committee’s Library Technical Report and will be in the new C++11 Standard. The Boost C++ libraries are already included in popular Linux and Unix distributions such as Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and NetBSD and are used by projects such as Python, Xibo, Civilization IV, etc.. Here are the steps to cross-compile Boost C++ libraries for arm using arm-linux-guneabi-g++: Download the source code:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.47.0/boost_1_47_0.tar.bz2/download

1	wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.47.0/boost_1_47_0.tar.bz2/download

Extract the source code:

mv download boost.tar.bz2
tar xjvf boost.tar.bz2
cd boost_1_47_0/

mv download boost.tar.bz2

tar xjvf boost.tar.bz2

cd boost_1_47_0/

Bootstrap the code:

./bootstrap.sh

1	./bootstrap.sh

Modify the configuration file (project-build.jam) to use the ARM toolchain by replacing the line with “using gcc” by:

using gcc : arm : arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ ;

1	using gcc : arm : arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ ;

Install the python development package:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

1	sudo apt-get install python-dev

Build and install the boost libraries:

./bjam install toolset=gcc-arm --prefix=~/edev/beagleboard/libs --disable-long-double -sNO_ZLIB=1 -sNO_BZIP2=1

1	./bjam install toolset=gcc-arm --prefix=~/edev/beagleboard/libs --disable-long-double -sNO_ZLIB=1 -sNO_BZIP2=1

This was tested in Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) and 10.04 LTS with linaro g++ toolchain. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his […]

September 13, 2011September 13, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Best Practices for Writing Safer C Code

Thomas Honold wrote an article published on EETimes giving 17 steps to safer C code. Not only this article provides tips to write safer C code, but I believe those steps are simply best practices when writing C code for embedded systems as they shorten the software life cycle by making it easier for a software team to write, debug and maintain code and by improving the software QA procedure. Here’s a summary of the 17 steps to achieve safer C code: Follow the rules you’ve read a hundred times: Initialize variables before use. Do not ignore compiler warnings. Check return values. Use enums as error types. Define an ENUM_MAX value at the end, so that the code to check the range does not have to be modified each time you add a new error code. Expect to fail Always assume there will be an error and set to default […]

September 12, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

What Programming Language Should I Learn ?

“What programming language should I learn ?” is a question often asked by people new to software development. The answer is always “it depends”. But for embedded systems, it seems C language is a must as you can see in the chart below (Source: “The 2011 Embedded Market Study” by Embedded.com). For the 2011 survey, 1886 respondents from across the embedded industry answered that their embedded project was mostly programmed in C language (62%), followed by C++ (22%), assembler (5%) and Java (2%). The other languages were all under 1%. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com