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Category Archives: C/C++ Programming
An Introduction to Docker for Embedded Developers – Part 4 Reducing Docker Image Size
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Navigating Memory in C++: A Guide to Using std::uintptr_t for Address Handling - February 22, 2024
- Embedded Expertise: Beyond Fixed-Size Integers; Exploring Fast and Least Types - January 15, 2024
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
In Part 3 we managed to build a Docker image containing the tools required to compile and link C/C++ code destined for our embedded Arm target system. However, we’ve paid little attention to the size of the image. Doing a quick Docker image listing we can see its grown to a whopping 2.14GB:
$ docker image ls
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID […]
An Introduction to Docker for Embedded Developers – Part 3 Cross-Compiling for Cortex-M
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Navigating Memory in C++: A Guide to Using std::uintptr_t for Address Handling - February 22, 2024
- Embedded Expertise: Beyond Fixed-Size Integers; Exploring Fast and Least Types - January 15, 2024
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
In the previous posting we looked at defining a custom Dockerfile where we can add specific tools (and their dependencies). From that we created a Docker image and this allowed us to build C/C++ code in a Docker container, ensuring a consistent build environment.
So far we have to build all our code using the native GCC toolchain which is part of the base Docker image (gcc:7.2). However, I want to be able to build an image I can download and run […]
Making things do stuff – Part 9
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
As a final instalment in this series on hardware manipulation I thought I’d revisit read-only and write-only register types.
Using tag dispatch is not the only way to solve the read- or write-only Register problem. For completeness let’s explore two other alternatives – SFINAE and constexpr if.
For these examples I’m going to use a simplified version of our Register class. I’m ignoring the bit proxy class and using a reduced API. Once understood, the techniques below can be applied to these […]
Posted in C/C++ Programming, Design Issues
Tagged C++, C++0x, C++11, C++1y, constexpr-if, GPIO, hardware manipulation, Modern C++, SFINAE, tag dispatch, Templates
1 Comment
Making things do stuff – Part 7
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
In our previous article we explored using templates to build a generic ‘register’ type to allow programmers to access hardware without all the nasty syntax of integer-to-pointer casting, etc.
At the moment, this class gives us little extra functionality beyond cleaning up the syntax (although, in its favour, it also doesn’t incur any additional run-time cost/performance).
In this article we’re going to extend our design to consider special hardware register types – notably read-only and write-only registers – and see how we can […]
Posted in C/C++ Programming
Tagged C++, C++0x, C++11, C++1y, hardware manipulation, Modern C++. C++11. C++14, Templates
2 Comments
Making things do stuff – Part 6
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
As code designers we tend to eschew specific ‘stove-pipe’ code in favour of reusable code elements. Up until now we’ve been coding some very specific examples so it’s probably worth looking at some more generic solutions.
In this article we’ll look at building generic register manipulation classes (or, as one commenter referred to them, ‘register proxy’ classes). Here, we’re really exploring code design rather than coding ‘mechanics’. I’m using this to explore some factors like the balance between efficiency, performance and […]
Posted in C/C++ Programming
Tagged C++, C++0x, C++11, C++1y, GPIO, hardware manipulation, Modern C++. C++11. C++14, Templates
3 Comments
Making things do stuff – Part 5
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
We’ve been looking at using C++ to manipulate I/O hardware. Previously, we’ve looked at the fundamentals of hardware manipulation; and how to encapsulate these mechanisms into classes. If you’ve not been following along I’d recommend reading the previous articles first before continuing.
This time we’ll explore a lesser-known feature of C++ and its application in hardware manipulation – placement
Posted in C/C++ Programming
Tagged C++, C++0x, C++1y, hardware manipulation, IO, placement new
3 Comments
Making things do stuff – Part 4
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
In the last article we explored the design of a class to encapsulate a physical hardware device. In that article I deliberately ignored how the class would actually interact with the hardware.
In this article we explore the options available to us for accessing hardware and the consequences of those
Posted in ARM, C/C++ Programming, Cortex, General
Tagged Class, GPIO, hardware manipulation, IO, Modern C++. C++11. C++14, STM32, STM32F4 Discovery
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Making things do stuff – Part 3
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
Previously, we’ve looked at the basics of hardware manipulation in C++ and applied that to a simple GPIO implementation.
In this article we’re going to have a look at encapsulating our code in a class and look at some of the design choices we have to make.
If you’re not familiar with hardware manipulation in C++ I’d highly recommend reading the previous articles in this series before continuing.
Even if you’re familiar with the concepts of hardware manipulation, if you haven’t read the […]
Posted in C/C++ Programming, Cortex, Design Issues
Tagged Class, GPIO, hardware manipulation, IO, Modern C++. C++11. C++14, Object-Oriented Design, OOD, STM32, STM32F4 Discovery
1 Comment
Making things do stuff – Part 2
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
Last time we looked at the basics of hardware manipulation in C++. This time we’ll apply this to some real hardware and have a look at the code
Posted in C/C++ Programming, Cortex, General
Tagged Cortex-M, GPIO, hardware manipulation, IO, Modern C++, Modern C++. C++11. C++14, STM32, STM32F4 Discovery
4 Comments
Making things do stuff – Part 1
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
C has long been the language of choice for smaller, microcontroller-based embedded systems; particularly for close-to-the-metal hardware manipulation.
C++ was originally conceived with a bias towards systems programming; performance and efficiency being key design highlights. Traditionally, many of the advancements in compiler technology, optimisation, etc., had centred around generating code for PC-like platforms (Linux, Windows, etc). In the last few years C++ compiler support for microcontroller targets has advanced dramatically, to the point where Modern C++ is a increasingly attractive language […]
Posted in C/C++ Programming, Cortex
Tagged GPIO, hardware manipulation, IO, Modern C++. C++11. C++14
15 Comments