Using OSX and PowerPC for JNode development and testing

Using OSX and PPC for JNode development and testing

What we want is:
1. CVS tool
2. IDE for development
3. A way to build JNode
4. A way to boot JNode for testing

First of all we need to install the XCode tools from apple. Usually it is shipped with your OSX, look in /Applications/Installers/. If it is not there you, you can download it from apple’s site.

1. CVS tool
Well cvs is already in the OSX installation. There are some GUI tools to make the use of cvs easier. SmartCVS is a good one, which you can use it in your windows/PC computer, or linux etc.

2. IDE
Eclipse.

3. How to build JNode with a ppc machine (not FOR, WITH ppc)
Good for us, JNode build process is based on apache ant, which as a java tool runs everywhere. The only problem is the native assembly parts of JNode. For them JNode build process uses nasm and yasm.

So the only thing we need is to build them for ppc and use them. They will still make x86 binaries as they are written to do.

First of all we have to get the nasm and yasm sources. The first one is on
http://nasm.sourceforge.net
and the other is on
http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/

After that we unzip them and start the compile.

NASM
Open a terminal window and go inside the directory with the nasm sources

Run ./configure to create the Makefile for nasm

If everything is ok you now are ready to compile nasm. Just run ‘’make nasm‘’. Maybe there will be a problem if you try to compile all the nasm tools by running ‘’make’’ (I had), but you dont need them. Nasm is enought.

Now copy nasm in your path. /usr/bin is a good place.

YASM
The same as for nasm open a terminal window and go to the directory with yasm sources.

Run ‘’./configure’’

Run ‘’make’’

Now you can either copy yasm to /usr/bin or run ‘’make install’’ which will install the yasm tools under /usr/local/bin.

That’s all with nasm and yasm. You are ready to build JNode. You may have problems using the buildl.sh script, but you can always run the build command manually ‘’java -Xmx512M -Xms128M -jar core/lib/ant-launcher.jar -lib core/lib/ -lib /usr/lib/java/lib -f all/build.xml cd-x86’’

4. Booting JNode
Well there is only one way to do that. Emulation.

There is VirtualPC for OSX, which is pretty good and fast. To use it just create a new virtual PC and start it. When the virtual PC is started right click on the CD-Rom icon at the bottom of the window (hmm I know there is no right click on macs I assume you know to press ctrl+click). Now tell the VirtualPC to use the JNode iso image as cdrom drive and boot from it. There you are!

I think there is also qemu for ppc. I have not ever used it, so I don’t know how you can configure it.