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Compile FreePascal on device

Revision as of 12:21, 7 January 2011

[FreePascal compiler] is a free compiler for the various Pascal dialects. There is also a project [Lazarus] which provides Delphi like IDE for the FreePascal compiler. In this article we will describe how to compile and install FreePascal compiler right on the device (currently n900 only, still have troubles to successfully compile it on my n810).

Bootstraping

First we need to get a working copy of fpc for ARM EABI. Currently, it is possible to get only ARB OABI version at the FreePascal web site. (version 2.2.2)

That's why we need to compile an ARM version of the compiler on the GNU/Linux PC first, then transfer it to the Nokia device, and compile the full compiler distribution there. That's why first you need to have fpc installed on your GNU/Linux box. Then, download fpc source with svn.

svn checkout http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/trunk fpc

You also need cross binutils for ARM. Let's compile it like this:

mkdir binutils
cd binutils
BINUTILS=binutils-2.20.1
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/$BINUTILS.tar.bz2
tar jxvf $BINUTILS.tar.bz2
cd $BINUTILS
./configure --prefix=/opt/binutils-arm-eabi --target=arm-none-eabi --with-gnu-as
 --with-gnu-ld 
make
make install
ln -s /opt/binutils-arm-eabi/bin/arm-none-eabi-as /opt/binutils-arm-eabi/bin/arm
-linux-as
ln -s /opt/binutils-arm-eabi/bin/arm-none-eabi-ld /opt/binutils-arm-eabi/bin/arm
-linux-ld

Then, export PATH so it will contain your binutils path first

export PATH=/opt/binutils-arm-eabi/bin:$PATH

Now we can compile fpc for ARM EABI. Go to fpc svn directory and run:

make all PREFIX=/opt/fpc-arm OS_TARGET=linux CPU_TARGET=arm OPT="-dFPC_ARMEL"

After successful compilation you will get "ppcarm" binary in the "compiler" folder inside fpc source tree.

noch@hactar:~/freepascal/svn/fpc/compiler$ file ppcarm
ppcarm: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped

Now it's time to scp ppcarm to the Nokia Maemo device, and compile with it sources there. From this point we work only on Maemo. I assume, you have openssh-server installed. You will also need the following packages: subversion - to get fpc source tree. binutils - to get GNU assembler and linker diffutils-gnu - fpc needs "diff" to compile itself coreutils-gnu - contains, "install" command, needed to run "make install"

For Diablo, I found "diffutils" package in the [Dayless] repository at the [gronmayer] repository list.

# dpkg -L diffutils-gnu | grep bin
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/gnu
/usr/bin/gnu/cmp
/usr/bin/gnu/diff
/usr/bin/gnu/diff3
/usr/bin/gnu/sdiff
/usr/bin/gcmp
/usr/bin/gsdiff
/usr/bin/gdiff3
/usr/bin/gdiff

Because fpc needs "diff" executable, then there's two options. Whether to add /usr/bin/gnu to the PATH

 export PATH=/usr/bin/gnu:$PATH

or create a symlink to gdiff in /usr/bin

ln -s /usr/bin/gdiff /usr/bin/diff

There is a linker problem like

./link.res: file format not recognized; treating as linker script
./link.res:281: syntax error
pp.pas(209,27) Error: Error while linking
pp.pas(209,27) Fatal: There were 1 errors compiling module, stopping
Fatal: Compilation aborted 

In order to avoid this, go to compiler/systems and change t_linux.pas so that it contain path to the /lib/ld-linux.so.3 instead of /lib/ld-linux.so.2, because we do not have /lib/ld-linux.so.2 on Maemo4 and Maemo5. This is a [quote] from the freepascal mailing list:

> also although it creates an EABI 4 executable correctly there is a
> problem with fpc-svn/compiler/systems/t_linux.pas that sticks the wrong
> dynamic linker name in the file. I fixed it with this...
>
>
> {$ifdef arm}
>     {$ifdef FPC_ARMEL}
>          defdynlinker:='/lib/ld-linux.so.3';
>     {$else} 

So, change to the fpc source directory and run:

make clean all PP=/path/to/newlycopied/ppcarm PREFIX="/opt/fpc-svn" OPT="-dFPC_ARMEL -O- -dFPC_ABI_EABI"

Then, make install with the same options

make install PP=/path/to/newlycopied/ppcarm PREFIX="/opt/fpc-svn" OPT="-dFPC_ARMEL -O- -dFPC_ABI_EABI"

Now, we have a working compiler in /opt/fpc-svn/bin But there are no config file, so it won't work. In order to create a config file, do

/opt/fpc-svn/bin/fpcmkcfg -d basepath=/opt/fpc-svn/bin/fpc -o /etc/fpc.cfg

This is it, now you have a working FreePascal compiler on Maemo. Next step is to install Lazarus, so you will be able to compile Lazarus created sources right on the device.

---to be continued---