How to PAL

[DJW]

Hello dudes,

I recently installed pal on my parallella board.
I already played a little bit with ePython, but C is a new programming language for me.
Can anyone help me with 3 follwoing questions?

2. Can anybody say something about which format the worker and the manager code has and how I can compile and execute them in bash?
2. Are there any good pal introductions to learn it from scratch?
3. How much faster is pal compared to ePython (I know this questions needs to be differentiated)?

Thank you for your support

Greetings from Germany
DJW

[peteasa]

[polas]

Peter's reply is very detailed and answered some of the questions I had wondered about PAL too In terms of the ePython vs PAL speed, Peter is right - the interpreted nature of ePython will result in an overhead over and above using PAL from C, but as Peter says there is also a steeper learning curve with PAL+C so there is a trade-off here. Incidentally I have thought about writing a Python module that wraps PAL, so that in ePython somebody could import this and use "native" PAL from their Python code directly which might be a nice way of combining these two technologies.

Nick

[shrogers]

A Python wrapper for PAL would be interesting. Once I get both ePython and PAL working I'd like to take a look at this.

[polas]

[mgrecki]

it is a shame, that clearly pointed-out errors are not corrected for months. There is nothing more irritating than downloading a software package and be not able to compile it following README etc. I want to say that the idea of parallella board is wonderful and even hardware in spite of bad USB experience is OK, but the SW part is really painful. That concerns also PAL which should be fully reliable. Look, the hardware platform is the same, the software base (OS and ESDK) is the same - why the package developer cannot see it is not compilable? Always something must be corrected and adjusted....
That was general remark, now going back to PAL. On fresh system with newest ESDK and PAL you cannot compile examples. That was already mentioned November last year... Further, even if the examples are excluded in .configure it is not possible to make "make install", since the installation scripts cannot find epiphany-elf-ranlib. You have to put the full path to it in the libtool script (at pal/devices/epiphany directory) to complete installation.... (probably there is simpler and more elegant way, but this one was easiest to find).
Then, since examples cannot be compiled, I wrote a simple PAL program (I just copied the example from PAL README.md. Almost immediately it has occurred the p_load function has lost func parameter. In compensation the p_run function has got it. OK, I have corrected.... Compile again, some minor other corrections and viola: there is linked program. Run it..... and "SIGSEGV. In p_close function.
OK, I want to debug library. No idea how to compile with -g, maybe setting CFLAGS will enable it. Trying to ./configure -> error. I have to make make distclean before. Well, trying -> errors. And now it is hopeless situation. I cannot make configure, the only way is probably get a fresh clone and start again. Well, it is not impossible, but should it be like that?
No idea why there are these problems... if I can run any example and then make it more rich and complex I can even find and correct some library errors. But only when I have some starting point.... If already at the begging there are problems I am discouraged. And tired.
So the PAL in current version require further debugging. Probably I will dig in a little, but this way is completely not effective and heavily losing time.

[peteasa]