Hi Shaz

Yes, a farm remote to developers. I would envision something like:

* Network hub/router
* A Linux x86 host(s) with a number of JTAG and USB ports available (via expansion boards if needed, but USB hubs and USB->JTAG adapters should be possible)
* A number of ARM boards, with a variety of peripherals. Each ARM board plugged into Ethernet/USB/JTAG as appropriate (or all 3).
* Software for a developer to schedule time on a board remotely via the Linux host
* Possibly some mechanism to see the output from a LCD, either an adapter board to the Linux host or a webcam pointed at the LCD or something. Other peripherals could be monitored in a similar way. AFAIK ERSA (European Space Agency) do something similar with emulated/real modules hooked together with USB.

Then a developer could develop locally under an emulator, do coarse debugging there, then when ready book time on a real board in the farm for final testing.

I think this should be feasible?

Joel


On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Shaz <shazalive@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Joel Crisp <cydergoth@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I think people missed one of the points in my email, which is that build is
> only part of the problem. I'm well aware of cross compilation and emulators
> for builds, however neither of these environments provides a fully capable
> *test* environment. This is where a hardware farm is one solution, one which
> wouldn't require everyone who wants to contribute to purchase their own
> hardware. From my experience porting the remote GDB backend to a custom JTAG
> debug architecture it makes everything much easier to debug in an embedded
> architecture when you can inspect internal state over JTAG. Whilst emulators

You mean that this farm be remote to developers? Can you please elaborate ...

> can provide a good debug environment, they never completely reflect the
> behaviour of the actual hardware in terms of timing, lockups, undocumented
> behaviour etc.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Joel
>



--
Shaz



--
The cyder is strong in this one Lord!