Microsoft Making Open Updates As We Speak

http://netmf.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets

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Very nice!

Shows progress.

Can anyone explain the Thu 1:19 PM checkin for me – not sure what they are accomplishing with this.

Is this something they built to be able to test on a PC instead of a mCu?

[quote]This includes the initial baseline of a new “Windows” NETMF solution. This, like the emulator, is a port of NETMF onto windows. However, unlike the emulator this is completely in native code. There are a number of reasons for this the most pressing ones being building greater understanding of the CLR and its many components in a generally hardware independent form, as well as to provide a test bed for networking stack updates in a rapid development fashion. To enable more rapid development this solution includes a VCXPROJ and .SLN file for VS2013 to build the HAL, drivers and cutom PAL support directly in VS, enable traditional edit build debug cycles. Ultimately we want to support this for ALL of the entire NETMF build but we need to get through the top functionality issues first.
[/quote]

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@ mhectorgato - It looks like they are working towards enabling Visual Studio builds of NETMF and getting a stable build of NETMF that runs on Windows so they can rapidly test fixes and changes as opposed to the slower deploy and test on hardware method.

So does that mean it’s using the VS C compiler instead of GCC or Kiel etc?

@ hagster - From what I can see, for parts at least. Not really sure where they are going with it though. Just my speculation based on the commits.

“This, like the -->emulator<—, is a port of NETMF onto windows”

[/quote]

May be they want to replace the current emulator, which has very poor performance, specially when debugging.
Debugging over RS232 is like rocket since compared to the emulator.

I think we will begin to see an increase in the frequency of the commits in the very near future. Some of the commits I am sure will be small in preparation of major fixes like networking but I think it’s a good sign of life from Sal and the guys on the NETMF team.

That is very promising! Being able to build from Visual Studio would be a great help!
I think they will be including the toolset with the PK to be able to achieve that.

I don’t think they’re replacing the emulator, and I definitely doubt they’re making MCU ports buildable from VS.

My guess is that this means, “the current team has little understanding of NETMF’s inner working parts, so we need to be able to rapidly iterate to gain that understanding, something that neither MCU hardware nor the emulator allows, so we’re porting to Windows (again)”.

A step forward for sure, maybe they are targeting a better support for unit testing so to not break what works :slight_smile:

cheers,
Jay