Re: [ECOS] RE: New features required on Cortex-M platform

[Ilija Kocho <ilijak@siva.com.mk>]

Hi Andrew

We appreciate your interest in eCos and we will welcome uGFX as an added
value to eCos.

However due to uGFX licence terms, that disallow commercial use we can
not allow it into main eCos repository.

This is not an end of story, because eCos offers an elegant way for
users that will want uGFX on eCos, to have it. It is eCos Package
Distribution Ref:
http://ecos.sourceware.org/docs-latest/cdl-guide/package.distrib.html .

uGFX EPK (eCos package) is a simple way for distribution of eCos module
sources. You sumply put uGFX EPK at your download page and users can
import it in their private eCos repositories with few clicks. The
package can also contain the licence that will be presented to the user
for acceptance. Should you put uGFX package somewhere on the net we can
point it by a link eCos site: http://ecos.sourceware.org/contrib.html .

Some technical considerations: eCos has a well defined I/O layer and
Framebuffer is a part of it. Therefore we strongly recommend Framebuffer
support as an option. Of course if you have time and there's technical
merit you can implement both options.

Regards to both Andrew and Jerzy

Ilija Kocho, eCos maintainer


On 16.06.2014 04:08, Andrew Hannam wrote:
> As one of the primary developers of uGFX I have been watching the ecos
> mail-lists for a long time but have never implemented an ecos system yet
> (just due to being caught up on other projects such as uGFX).
>
> I would be happy to work with you to create a port of uGFX for ecos.
>
> As per one of your follow-up Emails relating to uGFX versus Qt:
>
> Some of the advantages of uGFX versus Qt:
>  - uGFX is designed for small memory footprint systems (ie. embedded
> systems), Qt is not and therefore has a very large footprint.
> - uGFX works equally well on systems without a framebuffer. Qt requires a
> framebuffer (and the related RAM requirements)
> - uGFX is a full multi-threaded GUI, you can draw from any thread regardless
> on which thread the object was created. Qt has only limited support for
> multi-threaded applications.
> - uGFX has support for many LCD controllers and supports custom wiring
> connections to your micro. Qt assumes a full graphics/windows layer is
> already available (usually X).
> - uGFX includes other sub-systems like audio, toggle switch input devices,
> analogue dials, ROM based file system etc. Qt does not.
>
> Some disadvantages of uGFX versus Qt:
> - uGFX has a different API to Qt. More programmers are familiar with Qt.
> - uGFX has only restricted support for overlapping windows (container
> windows are however supported).
>
> uGFX is in short designed for embedded systems while Qt has a desktop based
> design.
>
> uGFX aims to provide a cross-platform way of writing embedded GUI
> applications. For example, most of the uGFX demos can be run on any uGFX
> supported operating system without changing a single line of code. This
> means you can prototype and debug your application on Windows or Linux and
> then very simply move it to your embedded board.
>
> Regards,
> Andrew (aka inmarket)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerzy Dyrda [mailto:jerzdy@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Saturday, 14 June 2014 1:15 AM
> To: eCos Discussion
> Subject: Fwd: New features required on Cortex-M platform
>
> Hello all,
>
> During developing some application on Cortex-M controller I realized that is
> missing some vital components in current version of eCos system (from my
> point of view)  i.e :
>
> 1) HTTP server - AHTTPD doesn't support lwIP stack what causes that it's
> useless.
> I'm planing to modify it thus any kind of advises are welcome.
>
> 2) Small embedded GUI working directly on display. From my side I propose
> uGFX -> http://ugfx.org/ License seems to be compatible and due its nature
> porting on new platform shouldn't be complicated even for me :) I'm also
> planning to add support and again any kind of comments advices or warnings
> are expecting.
>
> 3) SD bus support. I know that I can use SD card in SPI mode but on some
> board like STM32F4DISCOVERY SD card i only available on SD bus.
> It's high time to add this miss part of system.
>
> Best regards,
> jerzy
>
>


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