Shared Libraries n Stuff

Hmm, another long weekend followed by what turned into a long week. Damn I'm tired.

Well I gave up on building XBMC on the beagleboard for now, and I haven't had time to work on setting up a cross compilation environment yet either. Work is getting in the way too much, just too worn out to concentrate enough. I should try this weekend, although I need to get outside a bit too for some exercise and my own sanity.

I spent the rest of the long weekend past trying to grok shared libraries and thinking about how to get newlib into one for WoofƆs. I didn't make a lot of progress. It would be nice just to use something like Amiga libraries which are more like objects, including an instance pointer to all functions, but that just makes it too hard to re-use existing code. Partly because all the code also must be re-entrant and not reference .data or.bss, not to mention the object pointer. Easier to map/load, not so easy to port existing libraries. I just about had a handle on the whole elf-shared-library thing, but I was a bit too tired/distracted so it's still a bit up in the air.

Well at least one nice thing is it only takes 17 seconds(!) to do a complete build of newlib on my workstation, althoughI fear I will need a few iterations before I work it out. I was trying to enable _REENT_ONLY, but it seems to be an old option which is no longer supported and fixing it all up will be more hassle than it's worth, so I will probably just have to work out elf shared libraries to make any progress there.

It's not that I really need a C library just yet, but I was thinking about how to write the application server and how to hook system startup into application startup, i.e. accessing dynamic memory and so on, and so I was just thinking of killing two birds with one stone. Might have to leave that on the back burner for a bit, and try something a bit more modest. Actually I should probably put it all on the backburner for a wile, I have other things that need attention.

I didn't do anything on the yard at all last weekend - a bit hungover Saturday and then the weather turned. It's been a bit cold and crappy most of the week (in relative terms) which is always pretty draining. And the days are so short already ... (particularly when you get up at 11 or 12!)

Sleep. Damn. Eating poorly, sleeping worse. It adds up. My mouth has been a bit sore so I have avoided using the mouth splint every night - but boy do I notice if I don't use it. It's like the `Rain God' truck driver in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish who upon experiencing rain so heavy he imagines it makes no difference whether the wipers are on or off tries turning them off, only to discover it really does make it a lot worse. However to his dismay it doesn't get any better when he turns them on again. That's exactly what it is like with the mouth splint and sleep apnoea.

Well i'm glad I stayed in rather than going to the pub tonight - starting to feel a bit weird, and last weekend was too depressing - my drinking buddy went off to a show and I had a couple more at another pub, and what I can remember got pretty boring by the end.