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rsta2 / circle

A C++ bare metal environment for Raspberry Pi with USB (32 and 64 bit)
https://circle-rpi.readthedocs.io
GNU General Public License v3.0
1.83k stars 243 forks source link

Creating a list of Circle based bare metal projects for the Raspberry Pi #127

Closed hpingel closed 3 years ago

hpingel commented 4 years ago

With the goal to create a Wiki page at some point I'm starting to create a list of Circle based bare metal projects for the Raspberry Pi. I'm not shy to include uspi based projects too. (As a matter of fact, I'm generally interested in bare metal Pi stuff, so I wouldn't be offended if there are references to other frameworks (Rust, Pascal, etc.) coming in too.)

[work in progress, list is in no particular order at the moment]

I leave the term bare metal out of descriptions as it would be redundant information (at least here in this context). When circle-stdlib is used I won't name Circle on its own to keep it short.

We also need to include information if a hardware extension is needed or recommended to connect to the GPIOs.

Bare metal projects based on Circle or circle-stdlib

Bare metal projects based on uspi

Non-C/C++ bare metal development environments for the Raspberry Pi

External resources listing bare metal projects for Pi

I once have created a link list to other pages on the web with lists like this one. Just dropping them here for the moment:

Please add comments with more references.

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

@hpingel Thank you for preparing a first draft version of a list of Circle related projects! This looks already good.

What I am thinking about is, how this list can be made most useful for Circle users and how to reduce the effort to maintain it. Because maintenance will probably be required, if this list is managed in an open Wiki. For example new entries and containing links must be checked.

Given this I think (as always) focus is essential. We shouldn't try to cover all the bare metal projects for the Raspberry Pi out there, because there are so many and there are already lists on the Internet, which have a wider scope of projects. We probably won't be able to do this better than their authors and personally I don't want to spent too much time for this list. Because the Wiki is in my own project space, I think I am responsible for the contents in a way.

That means the focus should be on "Bare metal projects based on Circle or circle-stdlib", like you have listed them in the first list. I would keep other projects out of this list, including USPi related projects. For the USPi project there could be another Wiki in its own project space, if there is really demand for it. I would agree to include a very few number of links in "External resources listing bare metal projects for Pi" at the bottom of the page, because this can give a wider overview for potential readers.

hpingel commented 4 years ago

I am absolutely ok with reducing the list to Circle based projects above to those that are most useful for learning and that are also actively maintained.

When I created the list I wanted to list everything I could find because I am very curious about in what context Circle is being used or in what context developers decide to go bare metal. One could say "retro guys like to go bare metal" but that would be a bit simple because the emulation "types" are different: I find it interesting to see - how many music related projects exist (synthesizer, MIDI), how many "screen"-focussed projects exist (HDMI UI with HDMI sound), how many GPIO-focussed projects, etc.). I remember there was a project doing DMX light orchestration via Circle but when I looked at it yesterday I couldn't put my finger on the software component where Circle is embedded. So I left that one out. But we can of course make a list useful to others and not only useful for my curiosity.

Regarding uspi and the "history" of developing bare metal environments: Have you documented somewhere your own personal motivation and the steps that you did towards Circle? I understood uspi as being a predecessor to Circle but it might be a spin-off instead? If uspi should be obsolete / deprecated, is this documented and are the reasons already documented?

Personally I really like the Pi1541 uspi-based project and one of my daydreams is to help to convert it from uspi to circle-stdlib one day. That's why I wanted to list it. If uspi projects are not listed my motivation to port Pi1541 to Circle may grow. ;-)

In short: Your suggestions are all well with me.

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

@hpingel Thanks for your understanding. Of course I understand your motivation and curiosity. I think, this list should be dedicated to help users to find useful libraries (like circle-stdlib) for building bare-metal applications, built on Circle or to find applications, which are using Circle, for getting suggestions, if or how some problem can be solved in your own application. It's open source and I like the idea to learn from each other. Furthermore it can be inspiring to see, which applications exist and what is possible with Circle.

My problem when creating Circle was, that I had an USB driver for the Raspberry Pi from another project, but it was needing some external infrastructure to run and I wanted to make this driver available, because the were a lot of discussion about USB back in 2014 in the RPi bare-metal forum. So I released the driver together with the needed environment and called it "Circle". This name was basically chosen, because "Pi" is the circle-number (3,14...).

The USPi project came later. There was some demand for an USB-only driver for the RPi, written in C. USPi was derived from Circle. Personally I prefer using C++ and with the growing variety of RPi hardware and growing of Circle itself, it became much more difficult to handle both projects together. I think, there is demand for a RPi 4 USB driver in USPi, but currently my motivation is not strong enough to realize this, given that it would be difficult to map some C++ features (e.g. class inheritance) to a C environment. I'm afraid the USPi driver will lose importance over the time.

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

@hpingel Do you think, the Wiki should already be created with the Circle-based projects that are listed in your comment above? Otherwise please let me know, when you are ready, so I can open the Wiki then!

hpingel commented 4 years ago

@rsta2 : I would like to ask you to still wait a bit - I would like collect some more content for the description of the individual projects here and discuss it with you. Of course, the owners of the different projects are welcome to describe their own project.

I'm currently also involved in trying to make TIC-80 build and work again and so I'm a bit "under water" with Circle stuff: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/issues/1143

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

@hpingel No problem, there's no hurry.

hpingel commented 4 years ago

So how to describe the Circle-based projects in a way that is helpful for developers who want to create something based on Circle?

Possible categories:

I'm stopping here to let you comment.

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

I think, it's good to distinguish between libraries and applications and to categorize the applications. The categories, you have listed, are the three I also know to be the major areas of applications, based on Circle. So I agree.

farvardin commented 4 years ago

There is this project too, which is a recreation of the zx spectrum in bare metal: http://zxmini.speccy.org/en/index.html So far, it looks like it's closed source. The legal "THIS SOFTWARE MUST NOT BE SOLD, NEITHER ALONE NOR AS PART OF A BUNDLE.", looks like the author fears his work might be "stolen". Maybe it would be interesting to contact him and explain him the benefit of open sourcing this project (to make it more sustainable for example).

rsta2 commented 4 years ago

@farvardin I know this project and its author very well. We were working together and he helped to improve Circle very much and also contributed source code (e.g. for the gamepad support). I'm very unhappy, that the source code of this great project is not available and we already had a conversation about this over a year ago.

Yes, he fears that his work might by used by third parties to make money and in fact this already did happen. He pointed me to an offer on eBay later, where somebody sold SD cards of his ZX Spectrum emulator. I guess, this sentence was included later to prevent these offers.

I wasn't successful in explaining, why open source is good, in this conversation and I do not have contact to him any more.

rsta2 commented 3 years ago

Because it took a little bit long now, I have opened the wiki and quickly created a very basic project list in it. I think, project authors should decide by themselves, if they want their project added to this list. That's why I only added projects from authors, who already have told their interest. I created a table and have made it deliberately simple. Perhaps project classes can be added later, when more projects are in the list.

rsta2 commented 3 years ago

OK, the list is out. It's not "very successful" at the moment, but we will see. ;) I think, this issue can be closed.