I dug into the code, though, and discovered the issue is that _ctypes has its own configure call in setup.py. Pass in the right parameters, and all is well. In my case, my patch (atop of the pre-existing one) looks like this:

For the curious, below are the key steps for cross-compilation of Python outside LTIB (since it was for test, there was no need to incorporate it) for the MPC8315ERDB — it may work for MPC8313-based setups as well. You probably want to look at the original post for slimming the tree down once the build is done, and if you have modules for which support isn’t found, change the add_dir_to_list lines to point at your build system’s library and include directories rather than /usr/local.

At the one end is the old, hardcoded view; a good example, if a bit old, would be Joel Spolsky’s view of the Embedded Software World.

At the other end, prompted by the increasing presence of Java and other applications for cell phones, there is the idea that it’s all Java and that it’s every bit as easy as desktop development.

Neither of these views is entirely true, but they aren’t entirely false, either.  Joel is correct about limited programming capability in many cases, but as I bet even he is realizing there are flash updates these days even for consumer electronics like Blu-ray players. Others are correct about the increasing availability of tools that make it just like home in some embedded systems.

Where do I find myself in all this? Well, only recently did I find myself working on the first project for my employer where C++ can be used in a fairly embedded environment; previous projects had broken libraries, a lack of space for the generated code, or both. Of course, there’s still bootloader work in C, sometimes with a dab of assembler, too.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed about embedded software is that often it’s solving known-to-be-solved problems without the benefits of a full-up system. Perhaps you don’t have a shell capable of scripting — or the ability to just run Perl or Python, meaning you have to write C code that grovels over I/O that would be trivial in either. Sometimes it’s bringing up a board from scratch, and trying to get a bootloader to work — or writing your own (though, these days, it’s preferable to grab one of the pre-written ones, as you’ll get much more functionality once you get it running).

So what do I think of it? It can be frustrating when you’re writing many lines of code for what you know would be trivial in another language, but it’s also fun to squeeze every last drop out of a hardware solution.