Documentation

Running MiniGUI on uClinux

by Lu Gaofeng

Introduction

MiniGUI is a GPLed free software project, led and maitained by Feynman Software (Beijing Feynman Software Technology Co., Ltd.).

It aims to provide a fast, stable, and lightweight Graphics User Interface support system, which is especially fit for real-time embedded systems based-on Linux.

What is MiniGUI?

MiniGUI is a Graphics User Interface support system which runs on Linux or other UNIX-like system. It defines a set of light windowing and GDI (Grahpics Device Interface) APIs for applications. By using them, an application can create multiple windows and/or controls, and can draw in these windows/controls without interfering the others.

MiniGUI is composed of three libiraries: libminigui (source is in src/), libmgext (ext/), and libvcongui (vcongui/). Libminigui is the core library, which provides windowing and graphics interfaces as well as standard controls. Libmgext is an extension library of libminigui and provides some useful controls and convenient user interface functions, such as `Open File Dialog Box'. Libvcongui provides a virtual console window in which you can run programs in character mode.

You can configure and compile MiniGUI as one of three run-time modes:

        * `MiniGUI-Threads': A program running on MiniGUI-Threads can create
        multiple cascaded windows in different threads, and all the windows
        belong to a single process. MiniGUI-Threads is fit for some real-time
        systems with simple functionality.

        * `MiniGUI-Lite': A program running on MiniGUI-Lite is an independent
        process, which can also create multiple windows. MiniGUI-Lite is fit for
        some complex embedded systems, such as PDAs, Thin-Clients or STBs.

        * `MiniGUI-Standalone': A single process version of MiniGUI.

Currently, the latest stable version of MiniGUI is version 1.3.0. You can find latest information about MiniGUI and download the source from http://www.minigui.com

The advantages of MiniGUI on uClinux

Lightweight and need very little memory

MiniGUI aims to provide a fast, stable, and lightweight Graphics User Interface. MiniGUI can run on the system what has only 30 Mhz main-frequency CPU and 4M RAM. it is impossible for microwindows to do it.

More effective

The application base on MiniGUI can boot and interact with user fast, because the structure of MiniGUI is very different from normally, and we optimized graphic engine.

Most stable

Since 1999 we have released the first version of MiniGUI, The fact that MiniGUI be used in a lot of products and projects proved MiniGUI is very stable.

Be able to configure

You can configure MiniGUI for your projects, just configure a version only suitable for your system. it is very smart and not waste your memory.

The optimizations of MiniGUI-1.3 for uClinux

You can compile the resources (bitmaps, icons, and fonts) into the library (libminigui), and there is no need to read the resource configuration information from MiniGUI.cfg.
You can compile MiniGUI for static library, then you can run your applications base on MiniGUI library on uClinux without install MiniGUI.

We optimized MiniGUI-1.3 for uClinux. It can run fast and stably on uClinux.

Installing uClinux and Xcopilot emulator

First, Install elf tools. Visit: http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/m68k-elf-tools/ to get elf tools and more information.
Change your directory to <uClinux-path>/uClibc, and run

            $make menuconfig

and select General Library Setting, and selectd POSIX Threading support.

Change directory to <uClinux-path>, and run

            $make menuconfig
            $make dep
            $make

About how to install uClinux and xcopilot emulator, please visit: http://www.snapgear.com/tb20020807.html for more information.

Configure and compile MiniGUI for uClinux

Uncompress libminigui-1.3.0.tar.gz:

            $ tar xzvf libninigui-1.3.0.tar.gz

Enter directory libminigui-1.3.0/, and run ./buildlib-m68k-elf:

            $ ./buildlib-m68k-elf

Compile and install MiniGUI:

            $ make; su -c 'make install'

By default, MiniGUI library will be installed to /opt/uClinux/uClinux-dist/minigui/m68k-elf/.

Compile MiniGUI-Demo on uClinux

Copy MiniGUI-Demo(mde) to <uClinux-path>/user:

            $ cp -r <minigui-sample directory> <uClinux-path>/user

Enter your copyed directory, and refer to the 'Makefile' of applications in user directory, create a 'Makefile', just like:

            CFLAGS+= -I/opt/uClinux/uClinux-dist/minigui/m68k-elf/include
            LDFLAGS+= -L/opt/uClinux/uClinux-dist/minigui/m68k-elf/lib
                                                                                                                            
            EXEC = bomb
            OBJS = bomb.o

            all: $(EXEC)
                                                                                                                            
            $(EXEC): $(OBJS)
                $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $(OBJS) -lminigui -lmgext $(LIBPTHREAD) $(LIBM) $(LDLIBS)
                                                                                                                            
            romfs:
                $(ROMFSINST) /bin/$(EXEC)
                                                                                                                            
            clean:
                -rm -f $(EXEC) *.elf *.gdb *.o

Copy resources of your application to <uClinux-path>/romfs/bin

            $ cp -r res <uClinux-path>/romfs/bin

Enter your uClinux directory, and run make:

            $ cd <uClinux-path>
            $ make

After did all above steps, you can see your binary application in <uClinux-path>/romfs/bin directory.

Running MiniGUI-Demo

Start Xcopilot emulator

            $./xcopilot -ramsize 4096

Enter /bin directory:

            $cd bin

Run MiniGUI-Demo

You can see result in xcopilot LCD.