prc-tools version 2.0.92 USING THESE TOOLS In addition to installing this package, you will also need to install a Palm OS SDK. SDK versions 3.5 and greater work with prc-tools without modification. Earlier SDKs require changes to work with prc-tools; you can find suitably modified SDKs on Palm's web site at . You may wish to install several SDKs, and you will probably want to choose one as the default SDK, to be used when you compile without any `-palmosN' command line option. A symbolic link named `sdk' is used to select a default SDK; for example, to use the 3.5 SDK by default: $ cd /opt/palmdev $ rm -f sdk $ ln -s sdk-3.5 sdk (On Windows, the default equivalent of /opt/palmdev is C:\PalmDev.) [THE FOLLOWING WINDOWS INFORMATION IS OUT OF DATE.] On Windows, you will also have to add the prc-tools bin directory to your PATH. You need to add the directory \H-i586-cygwin32\bin. For example, if you have installed prc-tools in the default place, you could add the following to your AUTOEXEC.BAT: set PATH="C:\Program Files\PRC-Tools\H-i586-cygwin32\bin;%PATH%" For further documentation, read the info pages for prc-tools, gcc, etc., which you can also install as HTML documents at file:///C|/PalmDev/doc/index.html (Windows) or file:/usr/local/palmdev/doc/index.html (Unix) BUILDING FROM SOURCE To build these tools yourself, you will need to download the source from . The prc-tools source contains patches against specific versions of GCC, binutils, and GDB. You will also need the source code for these versions of these packages. See the file BUILDING.html for details. This file can be found in the prc-tools source tarball and also on the web at . LICENSING * The patches to the GNU tools in *.palmos.diff and the code in the tools subdirectory are free software, and may be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License, either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. See the file COPYING. * The run-time support code in the crt subdirectory is in the public domain, and the resulting object code may be freely linked into your programs. * The code in the libc subdirectory is redistributable as follows: libc.a, libc.sa Small standard C library (static and shared versions). Includes type stuff, printf and friends. putchar() and printf() send output to the LCD (even does scrolling!). I would not expect this to be terribly useful for anything except debugging, or perhaps a terminal program. String functions are also included, as are memmove, bcopy and those sorts of things. Much of this library thanks to Linus Torvalds, from the Linux kernel lib directory. He gave me permission to release this stuff _without_ GPL encumbrance. [From the prc-tools 0.5.0 README, by Jeff Dionne] * The code in the libm subdirectory is based on the Cephes Math Library and is freely redistributable as follows: libm.a Single precision math library. The standard kind of stuff (like multiply, add etc) will be included with libgcc.a when the compiler was built, this stuff is what one expects from a complete libm.a. This library was ported from the Cephes Math Library Release 2.2: June, 1992 and is Copyright 1984, 1987, 1988 by Stephen L. Moshier. Really neat stuff! [From the prc-tools 0.5.0 README, by Jeff Dionne] CONTRIBUTORS AND CONTRIBUTING The original post-linker tools and Palm OS support patches for gcc 2.7.2.2, binutils 2.7, and gdb 4.16 were written mainly by D. Jeff Dionne, Kresten Krab Thorup, Ian Goldberg, Keith Packard, and Kenneth Albanowski, with contributions from many others. John Marshall ported the patches to recent versions of GCC and binutils. Peter Trommler ported the gdb patches to 4.17. Many others have contributed suggestions, patches, bug reports, and other support; many thanks to Kenneth Albanowski, Marc Balmer, Simon Burge, Jesse Donaldson, Tom Dyas, Mark W. Eichin, Peter Eisenlohr, Christian Falch, Rick Flower, Brian Foley, Lonnie Foster, Ian Goldberg, John Ioannidis, Oliver Kasten, Scott Knight, David Loomes, Jonathan Lupa, Todd Mokros, Bret Musser, Kjell M. Myksvoll, Joakim Ogren, Ton van Overbeek, Bob Petersen, Thomas Pundt, Daniel R. Risacher, Alex Robinson, Keith Rollin, Jørgen Seland, Craig Setera, Katherine Smith, Michael Sokolov, Leon van Stuivenberg, Peter Trommler, Valeriy "Uwe" Ushakov, Andrew Vasquez, Brian Warner, David Williams, Ben Williamson, Hans-Christoph Wirth, and Naoki Yamaya. (If I've missed anybody out, please send me email.) The prc-tools project home page is . Discussion of further prc-tools development and maintenance takes place on the prc-tools-devel mailing list, accessible via the home page. (Note that discussion of Palm OS programming problems encountered while using prc-tools is off-topic on prc-tools-devel; such questions are more likely to receive knowledgeable answers on the more appropriate fora listed at .) Happy hacking! John Marshall