OpenStomp.com

I'm beginning to entertain the possibility of a Mac port. It would be a ton of work, and I haven't decided yet, but I thought I'd open up a thread to discuss it. There is currently a project underway to create a user-written open source Mac/Linux version of the propeller IDE tool (http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=298620). If that tool gets polished enough to compile the Coyote-1 code base, then a Mac version of Workbench would start to become a viable idea. I just got my first Mac (well, first in a long long time anyway) so now I have a platform to do some investigation on.

So there first question is, how many folks out there reading this own Macs, don't own a Coyote-1, and would buy one if a Mac version of the IDE and Workbench became available?

If anyone out there is accomplished in Mac application programming and embedded design and interested in contributing to a Mac Workbench port effort, let me know.

Hi Eric,

I run a Mac G5 (not intel based)....hopefully your port would be a universal binary so I could use it (at the moment it's hard to convince the wife I need another new toy -- new mac).
I've got a Coyote and although am not a programmer, I would be open to beta testing for you (although perhaps a coder would better be able to debug for you).

Now that the winter is setting in here (southern Ontario), I hope to get a chance to pull out the guitar and play a bit more.

Cheers

I´ve considered buying a coyote for a while and would love to see a mac port(or linux, for that matter).


Howard

Yeah, a dual Linux/Mac version of Workbench would be ideal if I can find a good GUI tool chain that will support both.
I've used GLUT/GLUI before but I've found it to be pretty kludgey. I suppose it might do the trick in a pinch. I've used it for Win/Linux cross platform development, but I've never used it on a mac.

I suppose an ideal solution would be to have a common code base that supports Win/Mac/Linux. GLUT/GLUI could do that, but I'm not sure what other options are available. There may be better paths out there.

I disliked GLUT for multiple-window applications the last time I worked with it,because when you clicked the upper right "X" to close a window it closed the whole app. Livable I suppose, but annoying. Perhaps that behavior has changed since I last did development with it?

I'm no coder....but I'm guessing Perl or Python don't cut it? Python is certainly available on multiple platforms!

The Windows version of Workbench is coded in C#. Porting to from C# to C++ would be pretty straightforward, so that would be my preferred language for a cross-platform solution.

I had written off Mono the last time I looked at it, but now that I actually have a Mac to try it out on it looks like Mono might be a workable Linux/Mac path for Workbench. I was able to get the main GUI to appear in Mono on a Mac very briefly before it crashed. The OS X version of Mono doesn't support debugging (the Linux version apparently does), so I'm going to have to give it a try in Linux to track down the bug and see how well Mono handles the real time aspects of the GUI. Hopefully I can tweak the build to be Mono friendly and support Win/Mac/Linux with the same source.

I'm not a programmer, but from what I understand Apple has the XCode development platform that also allows cross platform compiling of the code.

I believe it's based on Objective C, since that was the programing language of NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP.

Java would be another option.

I cannot begin to stress how important a port to other OS's is. It's a great tool, and because of its open source approach, many users will be linux enthusiasts. I myself run both linux and mac, but not windows.

Thanks for a great idea, and I hope to see a port soon!
P

I've been fighting with MonoDevelop but haven't yet gotten a successful install on Linux (Fedora 10). MonoDevelop under OsX doesn't support debugging, and I need the debugger to figure out why Mono is crashing on something in the current build. I think I'm going to give up on Fedora 10 and try to get MonoDevelop installed under some other Linux distribution to which it is a litle more friendly (like openSUSE, which they actually have install packages for).

I did try the XCode path, but porting to Objective C would be a huge effort and then when done would only run on a Mac (not Linux). The XCode tools support Java development, but again porting everything to Java would be a big effort. If I can get Mono working then all I need to do is tweak the current code base a little to make it Mono friendly and I'd be able to support Mac/Linux/Win with the same source (in C#).