qtarmsim 0.3.0

Qt graphical frontend to ARMSim

Qt ARMSim is a graphical frontend to the ARMSim ARM simulator. It provides an easy to use multiplatform ARM emulation environment that has been designed to be used on Computer Architecture Introductory courses.

It is based on a previous work of Gloria Edo Piñana, who developed GlSpim on 2008. GlSpim is the graphical part of what was planned to be a Qt graphical interface to the SPIM simulator.

The ARMSim ARM simulator, Copyright (c) 2014-15 by Germán Fabregat, is included with Qt ARMSim. It can be found on the armsim/ subdirectory.

Installing Qt ARMSim and its dependencies

Qt ARMSim has the following dependencies:

• Python 3.

• PySide.

On the other hand, ARMSim has the next dependencies:

• Ruby.

• GCC for ARM.

The next subsections describe how to install Qt ARMSim and its dependencies on GNU/Linux and on Windows.

Installing Qt ARMSim on GNU/Linux

The major GNU/Linux distributions provide packages for Python3, PySide, and Ruby. Therefore, the GNU/Linux distribution package should be used to install this software.

On the other hand, installing GCC for ARM can be achieved either by installing a GCC for ARM package provided by the GNU/Linux distribution at hand, building a cross-compiling toolchain, or by extracting the gcc-arm-none-eabi tar.gz for linux32 from the Arduino download page (beware that this last option could not be appropriate on linux64 versions).

Finally, Qt ARMSim can be installed using the pip3 command. (If after installing python3, pip3 is not available, it can be manually installed by downloading get-pip.py, and executing the following command: sudo python3 get-pip.py.)

For example, on Ubuntu you can install Qt ARMSim, ARMSim and their dependencies using:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-pyside python3-pip
$ sudo apt-get install ruby gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi
$ sudo pip3 install qtarmsim

On a Gentoo distribution, you can install Qt ARMSim, ARMSim and their dependencies using (as root):

# emerge -av pyside ruby crossdev
# echo "PORDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage" >> /etc/portage/make.conf
# crossdev --target arm --ov-output /usr/local/portage
# pip3 install qtarmsim

2.2 Installing Qt ARMSim on Windows

To install Qt ARMSim, ARMSim, and their dependencies on Windows, please follow the next steps:

1. Download and install Python 3 from the Python download page for windows. During the installation process, you should say yest to ‘Add Python to the Windows path’.

2. Download and install Ruby 2 from Ruby Installer for Windows page. During the installation process, make sure to select the ‘Add Ruby executables to you PATH’ option. (On Windows XP, Ruby 2 versions could fail to start. If this is the case, simply install a 1.9 version.)

3. Download GCC ARM cross compiler for Windows from the Arduino download page. Open the gcc-arm-none-eabi-x.y.y-win32.tar.gz file and extract the gcc-arm-none-eabi folder on any path you prefer. (Remember your decision, as you will have to configure Qt ARMSim to set the ARMSim GCC Compiler option to ‘[PATH]\g++_arm_none_eabi\bin\arm-none-eabi-gcc.exe’, where [PATH] is the path you have used.)

4. Install PySide and Qt ARMSim using the pip3 command. Open a Windows console (executing either Power Shell or cmd, depending on your Windows version), and execute the next commands (assuming you installed Python 3.4):

   C:\> cd C:\Python34
   C:\Python34> Scripts\pip3 install PySide qtarmsim

3. Executing Qt ARMSim

Simply execute the qtarmsim command, or click on the corresponding entry on the applications menu (on GNU/Linux, under the Education category).

4. Upgrading Qt ARMSim

If you want to upgrade an already installed Qt ARMSim, simply execute the following command on GNU/Linux:

$ sudo pip3 install --upgrade qtarmsim

Or the equivalent command on Windows:

C:\> pip3 install --upgrade qtarmsim

5. Uninstalling Qt ARMSim

To uninstall Qt ARMSim on GNU/Linux, execute the following command:

$ sudo pip3 uninstall qtarmsim

Or the equivalent command on Windows:

C:\> pip3 uninstall qtarmsim

Changelog

0.3.0 (2015-06-09)

• Migrated from PyQt to PySide to allow a simpler installation of Qt ARMSim.

• Developed a new source code editor based on QPlainTextEdit, though removing the prior QScintilla dependency, which allows a simpler installation of Qt ARMSim.

• Improved the ARM Assembler syntax highlighting.

0.2.7 (2014-11-05)

• Last revision of the first functional Qt ARMSim version, as it was used on the first semester of an introductory course on Computer Architecture at Jaume I University. This version has PyQt and QScintilla dependencies.