Re: What do we have to do to resuscitate micro Perl? I want Circuit Perl NOW!

[stevieb]

I'm no authority, but I highly doubt that even the most trimmed down version of perl could "fit and run within just 256k of code space and 16k of RAM". I would stand corrected if it were possible.

Not embedded, but for Raspberry Pi, we've got RPi::WiringPi (tutorial) and WiringPi::API, but that's not microcontroller.

Personally, I sometimes do my microcontroller prototyping on a Linux box with Perl, then port it over to C/C++ when the code does what I want, but the whole point of using a microcontroller is to run extremely efficiently. Adding in a whole extra layer would slow things down at best, and add in an entire new software layer for things to go wrong at worst.

I haven't heard of any ongoing projects like this, so I'm interested to see what other's takes are though...

[LanX]

> fit and run within just 256k of code space

For comparison: App::Staticperl comes with an example "SmallPerl" which fits into 580k.

And this still includes packages like Coro or AnyEvent.

[LanX]

> I'm no authority, but I highly doubt that even the most trimmed down version of perl could "fit and run within just 256k of code space and 16k of RAM"

Depends on how much trimmed down is still acceptable.

Flavio Glock's perlito project is realizing a portable "subset of Perl" implementation which targets JavaScript, Perl 6 and Java engine.

I don't see a reason yet why Lua couldn't be added.

It's also unclear for me if the Perl compiler also needs to be fitted into the 256k.

Executing a cross compiled OP tree (excluding all eval variants) might be sufficient.

[ait]

Sure, I get what you're saying. I am not thinking so much for 8 bit AVRs but rather in archs where you may have 2 chips (think Arduino Yśn that's why I mention OpenWRT) or in larger microcontrollers like ESP8266 which is where most of the Circuit Python is working right now AFAIK.

[stevieb]

I don't think "where Python is working".

I've done my job.

I don't believe that low-level hardware hackers need to think that hard core embedded stuff should be done with Python/Perl/whatever. If it isn't a micro-controller, its something more high-level, and I didn't think your question leveraged that.

You may want to rephrase your question, as having extra power and double CPUs to make it 'capable' to run a high(er) level language makes things a microcontroller doesn't quite do that. Items that 'power up' to allow these higher level languages completely take away from their true purpose.

A microcontroller is like a PLC (Programmable Logic Control)... sway from their basic purpose so they accept anything but basic commands, and you may as well have a full-blown computer :)