Symbol to Unallocated Memory

Alex,

Take a look at the Assembly Language Tools User Guide (http://www-s.ti.com/sc/techlit/spru280, section 8.10.3 - 8.10.5.  Is this what you are looking for?  There is also a way to preinitialize unallocated memory using the linker command file, but makes your .out file bigger, see section 8.16.

Regards.

Alex,

Did those sections in the documentation help you?  I understand how it's trickier since in your case BIOS is generating a linker command file.  What's the current status?

Best regards,
Brad

Brad,

I was on vacation last week, so sorry for not replying sooner.  I took a look at the documentation, and while it is helpful in understanding linker sections and labels, I don't see a specific label for unallocated memory that I can use.  I'm needing to essentially use a loop to walk through the entire memory section in C++ to ensure it is all set to a non-executable pattern (and set it to that pattern if it is not), so a specific label and/or example would be extremely beneficial.

I can think of two notions of unallocated memory.  I'm not sure which one is under discussion here.  You may be talking about pieces of memory that are defined in the MEMORY directive of the linker command file, but the linker does not allocate any section into those pieces.  Or, you may be talking about pieces of memory that are not defined in the MEMORY directive.  I think you mean the first one.  Is that right?

Thanks and regards,

-George

This is my first real experience with the DSP/BIOS, so my apologize if what I'm asking is unclear.

When I look at my .map file, for instance, I see memory allocations for .bss, .text, .const, etc. with a specific memory address and length next to them.  These are portions of memory that is allocated.  What I'd like to have is an additional tag of some kind, something like .spare, that I can access from C++ that points to the portions of memory that the linker did not allocate anything to.

If you're suggesting that it is possible to access this unallocated portion of memory without using the linker directive, that way seems like it would be significantly easier.  Either way, whether we use the linker directive or not to access this portion of memory, I'm not sure how to go about implementing this.   Does this help you to better understand my question?

Brad Griffis said:

1. Turn on the --xml_link_info linker option to generate an output xml file.
2. Write a perl script that parses the xml output.
   1. Determine the end "the main block" of memory in each of the defined memory areas.
   2. Generates a simple C file that contains variables/structures containing the needed address info.

To make this part easier, install http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Code_Generation_Tools_XML_Processing_Scripts and start with one of the scripts in the "map" directory.

Hope this helps ...

-George

Brad,

I have done most of what we discussed on the phone on  Friday.  Enabled the XML output, wrote a Perl script to parse through the file efficiently and write back into my conants header file the memory location pointers and sizes for the unallocated memory space.  I have tested my implementation code now reading over that unused memory space, and it works perfectly.

The one hitch I'm having, and this is likely just due to my inexperience with Batch files, is that I am not certain how to call the same build options that CCS calls.  I would like to outline my Batch file to call CCS build options, perl myScript.pl %1%, CCS build options again.  I am passing the arguments "Debug" or "Release" into my Perl script, and I would like the build to use these associated arguments from the batch file as well.  Can you offer me any guidance in this area?  Thanks.

Alex,

Sounds like you're making great progress!  Glad to hear it!  Have you seen this wiki article:

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Projects_-_Command_Line_Build/Create#Build_a_Project

If that doesn't help please give some snippets of what you've tried and the corresponding output.

Best regards,
Brad

Thank, that was the article I was looking for.

When I try to execute the command for a default build given in that article, however, the prompt says "the system cannot find the specified path."  My batch file first does the proper navigation

cd C:\Program Files\Texas Instruments\CCSv4\eclipse

Before actually executing the command

jre\bin\java -jar startup.jar -data "C:\myWorkspace" -application com.ti.ccstudio.apps.projectBuild -ccs.projects myProject -ccs.configuration %1

Since this is a long command, it's slightly ambiguous what part of this command the prompt is getting lost in.  I have verified that jre/bin/java does exist in my eclipse folder, and startup.jar exists at the top-level of the eclipse folder.  Additionally, I executed the command from the Command Prompt and it worked just fine, so it must be something I'm misunderstanding about batch files.

Alex,

I modified my batch file to look like yours but it worked fine, i.e. no odd errors.  Since this has now become a CCS issue I recommend starting a new thread in the CCS forum so we can get help from them.  Please be sure to post your complete build output.

Thanks,
Brad

Alex,

Would it be possible to provide the project (or a test case) that can reproduce the error?

Thanks

ki

Ki,

I have moved this dicussion into the Code Composer forum as Brad suggested.
http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/tms320c5000_power-efficient_dsps/f/109/t/58790.aspx

I cannot release the code or the project--I'll see what I can do about producing it on a sample project.