How difficult is it to write embedded software?

This easy:

Problem calling rake from Cygwin

I can't call my mingw installed (from rubyinstaller) rake and gem from cygwin. See the output below:

sh-3.2$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [i386-mingw32]
sh-3.2$ gem --version
C:\Ruby\bin\ruby.exe: No such file or directory -- /cygdrive/c/Ruby/bin/gem (LoadError)
sh-3.2$ rake --version
C:\Ruby\bin\ruby.exe: No such file or directory -- /cygdrive/c/Ruby/bin/rake (LoadError)


The only help I have been able to find is this comment . Which states that I should use rake.bat and gem.bat instead.

sh-3.2$ rake.bat --version
rake, version 0.8.7
sh-3.2$ gem.bat --version
1.3.5

:-( This makes it a bit complicated to call rake from a makefile.

Cygwin gcc "access denied"

 cygwin gcc outputs "access denied" then called from cmd.exe. The reason for the problem is described in this post. Basically it because cygwin uses symbolic links for configuration of gcc to point at gcc-3.exe or gcc-4.exe and windows don't understand symbolic links. So I will have to replace my calls to gcc.exe with gcc-4.exe to make it work from cmd.exe.

Building "instant-up" real-time operating systems

How great wouldn't be to have a RTOS that was "instant-up" on a new target. I came across an idea for such RTOS in this article: Building "instant-up" real-time operating systems

Howto make hyperlinks in microsoft word absolute

To make all hyperlinks absolute in a word document. You can set the hyperlink base to x.

"Great usability" :-)

More details on the topic here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903163