GNUSim8085 development team is pleased to release version 1.3.6 of its 8085 simulator for Linux and Windows platforms. This is the first stable version after moving over to launchpad for our project management. With this release we bring to our users a wide range of new additions. To read the complete release announcement head here. We appreciate your continued support in the form of bug reports (with patches ) and general feedback. Feel free to ask questions and get support through Launchpad’s Answers interface. You can join our development team here - https://launchpad.net/~gnusim8085-devel . We always have some work. Some key highlights of this release are as follows

• The UI is now internationalized. Translations for Arabic, Asturian, Catalan, Esperanto, French, German, Gujarati, Italian, Kannada and Spanish languages are now in place.
• Printing support is added.
• Improved Windows installer with multi-language interface.
• Several UI modifications to enhance user experience.
• A dozen bug fixes.

Starting with this release the release files will be available only on Launchpad download page. Please head to https://launchpad.net/gnusim8085 Packages for older Ubuntu releases  are expected to arrive soon and we shall announce once it is in place.

The project management is moved from sourceforge.net to launchpad.net. The work of migrating bugs from sourceforge.net to launchpad.net is in progress. Going forward all project communication will happen only via the launchpad infrastructure.

And oh! We have our own domain now http://www.gnusim8085.org (a redirect to the LP page) and a brand new logo courtesy of Kamaleshwar Morjal

Happy Simulating!!

In KVM this is achieved by adding the “redir” argument to the command while starting the virtual machine;

kvm -hda fedora.img -hdb swap.img -boot c -m <memory allocation in megabytes> -redir tcp:[host-port]::[guest-port]

Here we would like to make the guest port 22 (default ssh port) listen on some host port, say 2222.

kvm -hda fedora.img -hdb swap.img -boot c -m 384 -redir tcp:2222::22

If you are using Virtual Box then follow this tutorial.

Now your guest machine can be accessed via ssh from your host system as you would do for any remote server. E.g.,

ssh -l rtems -p 2222 localhost

In case you need X forwarding, use the -X flag or the -XC flag for X forwarding with compression enabled.

Emacs with tramp mode on my (host) Ubuntu machine is all I now need. A perfect Fedora 12 “remote” development server is setup. I can now do away with all the jazz of GNOME/KDE on the virtual image .

A new release with a lot of bug fixes and some useful features is coming soon. With this release, we will have localisation support with strings translated into Gujarati, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Catalan and Esperanto. If you are translator, head to the translations page and start firing in some translations in your language NOW.

We are happy with Launchpad just for some very inflexible structure that it imposes (but thats a different blog altogether) and the absence of a wiki. We are back to active development and are absolutely excited with the numerous feature and support requests that are coming in via email as well as the trackers. I guess the German Wikipedia page on GNUSim8085 did contribute to the sudden rise in interest. Happy hacking and simulating.

Best Night Photo – I casually took a photo of this scene from over a bridge and upon seeing it on the LCD I saw the reflection of the colours and the beauty. Took out my tripod and spend 15 minutes getting the image according to what I like. Easily my favourite night shot of 2009. Taken in Barcelona.

Memorable – Most difficult one to choose. In the end I preferred this one to this other photo because the other is seen in gazillion of web photo albums. This is unique, simple and potrays the wonderful Swiss landscape.

Adorable – Do I even have to explain? I thank God for this. Best wishes and a very very Happy, Prosperous New Year 2010 to all my readers.

So here goes a quick how-to (more of a note to self) on how I setup a remote git repo on one of the servers I have ssh access to.

1. SSH into your remote server (ssh uname@remoteserver)

2. Say, you are starting off setting up a git setup on this remote server. Create a directory by name say git (In the below example I put it in the home directory). All projects shall go into this directory.

uname@remoteserver$ mkdir ~/git

3. Now, create a project.git directory. If your project name is ledblink then do the following.

uname@remoteserver$ mkdir ~/git/ledblink.git

4. Initialise a bare git directory

uname@remoteserver$ cd ~/git/ledblink.git

uname@remoteserver/git/ledblink.git$ git – -bare init

5. Edit the description file to describe the project [Optional of-course]. Then edit the config file to enable reposharing by adding the line “sharedrepository = 1” under the [core] section.

6. Setup appropriate permissions. In the below example user only rights.

uname@remoteserver/git/ledblink.git$ chmod -R g=u .

uname@remoteserver/git/ledblink.git$ find . -type d | xargs chmod g+s

So all is done on the server side. Go back to your local machine.

7. Go to the folder you want to be version control or create a fresh directory where you will put your project files. Lets say localprojectrepo is the directory name. Change directory into the localprojectrepo and do the following.

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ git init

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ touch samplefile.txt

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ git add .

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ git commit -m “First commit”

Your local git repository is created. Now lets add the server as remote so that a push “syncs” the changes to the remote server.

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ git remote add origin uname@remoteserver:<pathto>/git/ledblink.git

uname@localhost/localprojectrepo$ git push origin master

Life is good! To take backups of your remote git repo, use your favourite means to copy the ~/git directory you create on the remote server. Thanks to good old friend Anurag for helping me through the details.

This time around Santosh Vattam and myself are taking leads in having a RTEMS Workout. We have put up the pre-requisites, purpose and general outline on the wiki page here. Currently we are stream lining the objectives into being more specific. If everything goes well, we will be kick starting the workout with a basic introduction to RTEMS, a quick overview of the architecture, a walk through of source code structure and some basic knowledge sharing wrt what might be required during the next 4 days. So Day 1 would mostly be setting up and getting up to base. Day 2, 3 and 4 would be hard days filled with coding, debugging and lots of fun! Day 5 would be more of a wrap up – collecting patches, cleaning up things, sanity checks and reporting!

So, if you want to see your contributions go into NASA and ESA space shuttles then RTEMS workout is the place you need to head to. RTEMS community is a bunch of extremely nice people full of patience and am sure you will have fun hacking with us.

On a sidenote, I am currently at Zurich Airport calculating the probability of missing my connecting flight given that my first flight is delayed, life is full of mathematics. Number never fail to impress me. See you at FOSS.IN 2009!

My homepage

Nice, right? It would be a blunder on my part if I don’t mention my good friend Kamaleshwar Morjal for all the efforts he put in over the last two weeks to get a new design running. He has his own design company “Eficacy Designs” and provides design services for the web and lots more. The Wordpress blog theme, was custom made for me. Very few designers have the capability to convert what you think and tell in words into the final product. Believe me, I just had online IRC conversations with him of how I would like my pages to be and thats it! A shameless plug but also a show of gratitude – “Do check up with him for any of your future design needs or consultancies. I highly recommend him”. So in short, the all new tuxmaniac.com is up and running. Check it out!

Aanjhan’s Home on the Web

Most often when we start a project, we get a very generic picture , read around the project’s required literature background and immediately get into the “details” of the system a bit too fast without “completely” getting a grip on the Functional Overview of the system. Many people do the documentation (including explaining the design structure, functional flow) after coding a basic prototype and this itself in my opinion is a flaw. I found it much better to do the reverse and found most successful “engineers” do that way. There have also been scenarios where people have asked me “You draw a structural representation of your system before implementing??” which I find very amusing. How can one get something done without having a picture on paper first?

So the first thing I do now when starting off on a new project is to get a very high abstract picture of the requirements of the project. Then a bit more digging into the “functionality”. It more or less can be compared to a behavioural modeling of the project. Something like this  . Note that the picture does not have any details of implementation (like which function to call, in what module will the implementation go into, what parameters to pass, which module is reusable etc etc). Its just plain functional diagram. This in my opinion helps one to cover most use cases, error scenarios. Its much easier to handle or think about these scenarios at a high level. Believe me, its just too easy to get into the nitty gritty and start putting down the details. Slap yourself and come out of that once you find yourself doing it. The paradigm is that once you are into the details you lose track of the big picture and hence the wider scope and overlook several scenarios. Yes, of-course there will still be some scenarios overlooked but it would be less in number and much easier to handle.

Once most cases are covered one can now, start digging into the diagram and find out re-usable portions of a module easily by repeating flow diagrams, eliminate conditions etc. And then get into the low level design and coding aspect. Also having such a high level functional diagram in place gives rise to many test cases and ensures you test most common conditions before hand. I use Freemind for these diagrams. A great tool not only for mind mapping but also for such things.

It might sound very trivial, but how many of us have got stuck in the utter complexity of the system and miserably struggled to get ourselves out of the situation? If you have any other suggestions do feel free to leave a comment.

Google Summer of Code 2009

I am participating in this year’s google summer of code program as a student (yes, you read it right , as a student ).  You can find my proposal to RTEMS here (pdf). The Community Bonding period is almost coming to a close and the work package is getting more clear day by day. My mentor, Thomas Doerfler from Embedded Brains Gmbh has helped me refine and catch up with all the necessary required knowledge to start work. Thank you Thomas. So this summer is already scheduled for me. Oh! You can find the project related wiki page here.

Photography

Whenever I feel like “Its getting on to me”, I take my good friend (now its got some companions like tripod, UV-Filter, Polariser etc) and go shooting. Outcomes are the sets of Tulip Show (one of my favourites), Geneva Autoshow, random pics of my town and nearby areas. The photos I liked the most are in the Masterpieces set. Some preview below.

 

Oh and my cooking skills have improved tremendously. I can now cook Palak Paneer too

Academia

Its been hectic, hectic and hectic. But things are looking good. If everything goes well I should be able to get some experiment results out of my project by July which could be great. I have decided to put all my code that I have written for my assignments on the interweb under the WTFPL. Thanks to Thibault to have suggested it If FEL team accepts we can package it under different sections and provide it along with the FEL Spin for F12. I have a few blog posts to make on some roadblocks I came across which could be really very interesting and informative for fellow Computer Architects, students and in general to anybody interested in Hardware Modeling and Design.

Thats all folks! Later!

1. Came out of Brussels Railway station and for a moment wondered whether I took the wrong flight/train to some place in the US. Tall buildings (very much unlike Europe)
2. Explored most of the city with a map provided by the youth hostel (2go4). Very informative map with some cool Young Traveller tips and favourites.
3. Travelling alone is no more boring.. I have my good companions (yoda and my Nikon D60 – need to find a name for her)
4. KillerX decided not to join me in brussels at the last moment because of some commitments, and I was left alone in the 6 bed dorm. It was so exciting to meet new faces everytime you enter your room in the evening and everytime you exit the room in the mornings, you would know these people (who you would have spent a whole night chatting) were not going to be around. I left notes on their tables and left the place.
5. Met people from Chile, Australia, Taiwan, Spain and ofcourse Switzerland itself in this short stay here. And most of them were good looking girls KillerX , you missed someting
6. Had all those that Belgium and Brussels is famous for.. From Waffles to Kwak, Kasteel, Krieks…
7. I returned back to Swiss and was down with flu for almost three days and today I am feeling a bit better. Hence this quick blog post. Its been a horrible three days.
8. The number of times I got lost in this city easily exceeds the sum of all the times I have got lost in my brief periods of stay in Europe and my short Eurotrips. I infact managed to get lost and end up in a street having strip clubs too.
9. The number of Siren sounds I have heard in three days is way higher than any I have heard in my 6 month stay in Swiss. Goes to show the number of politicians in this city.

Brussels, a nice mix of middle age europe and modern architecture. A city that has life and parties go well into the night. Brussels through my lens here.