SystemC on Mac

SystemC works on Mac!

Thanks to the folks at Logic Poet, SystemC on Mac is much easier than on Windows and Linux. Get then installer here and install it. You know how to install an app in Mac, don't you? don't you?

The important files are installed in /Library/SystemC/Current.

For your compulsory Hello World in SystemC, first create a New Project by keying Shift-Apple-N. When you get this dialog, choose SystemC app:

You can also see there's other types of SystemC projects available including TLM and AMS. Anyway, you'll get a dummy program FOC. Let's name the project "sc_hello". You will then get this:

Build it by hitting Apple-B. Run it by clicking on Product->sc_hello on the control pane on the left:

Congratulations! Now you can forget about SystemC on Linux, or gasp, on Visual Studio!...

First Couple of Weeks of CocoaRuby

or Ruby-Cocoa for that matter.

Cocoa is the default framework for writing applications for Mac OS X, and the default language for Mac OS X development is Objective-C. Ruby is the latest programming language that is taking the programming community by storm. On one hand, Objective-C offers the best performance for Mac applications. On the other hand, Ruby wins in terms of programming productivity hands down. Just look at the number of blog posts on Ruby-on-Rails.

The Cocoa-Ruby bridge offers programmers who are comfortable - not necessarily very fluent - in both Objective-C and Ruby the productivity gains of using Ruby for creating Mac applications. Yes, you do have to know the Cocoa API, too.

It turns out Cocoa-Ruby is preinstalled in the Xcode3 that comes Developer Tools for Leopard. The default Xcode2 in Tiger does not support Ruby. I had the impression a Leopard migration was necessary to do Ruby coding. Happily, I found out that I just had to download Xcode version 2.5 to perform Ruby coding under Tiger. I've downloaded and built a few Ruby Mac sample apps so far.

Now, to build my first "original" Ruby app...

Verbose Mac Startup

URL: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/348

Verbose booting shows you the actual process of Mac OS X's startup. You'll see drivers get loaded and services launch. You can get it by holding Command - V at boot time, which brings up the familiar white on black console.

If you'd prefer to always see the system messages on boot, you can adjust the firmware from the Terminal with the nvram command.

To turn on Verbose booting, at the Terminal type the following:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

Disabling Verbose mode:

sudo nvram boot-args=

And to see the current firmware nvram settings:

nvram -p

More info on the boot process here: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_boot.html
and here: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Articles/BootProcess.html

More hints here: http://nosheep.net/story/mac-os-x-start-up-keys/ and here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482