ARM Semi-Technomagery — Getting the code to compile...

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Getting the code to compile…

A repost from my other blog from before I started this one.

I have the MP3 development board from SparkFun working… when I got it, it didn’t work and I sort of left it for a while due to some other events going on. I pulled it out of storage recently, charged it, started messing with it, and after tweaking the LCD I was greeted with the SFE boot logo which I had not yet seen!

One of the things that had been a major roadblock in ARM development for me was getting ARM support working under linux. It’s important to note in this case that I hate Eclipse. If I’m going to use an IDE, I prefer Sun’s Netbeans. Don’t ask why, I just like it. Everything I saw was for getting the gcc-arm toolchain working (mostly under windows) in Eclipse. So I set out to figure it out.

For the record: I am using Linux 2.6.31-16-generic x86_64 in Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop. I will soon double check these instructions (and edit the post so the information stays in one place) on my Gentoo desktop running Linux 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 x86_64.

The first thing I did was to get the gnu-arm toolchain from http://www.gnuarm.com. Under files you will find a binaries section. Grab the latest version for your operating system (i.e. since I use x86_64, I downloaded this file. For myself, I chose to unpack it to ${HOME}/gcc-arm (so that gcc is in ${HOME}/gcc-arm/bin).

Now the source code took some editing — I’m not sure if some of the Windows IDEs, being as how NTFS is not case sensitive, didn’t mind the case of some of the include files being wrong. I also had to change the Makefile from

----------------------------------


# Define directories, if needed.
##DIRARM = c:/WinARM/
## DIRARMBIN = $(DIRAVR)/bin/
## DIRAVRUTILS = $(DIRAVR)/utils/bin/
# Define programs and commands.
SHELL = sh
CC = arm-elf-gcc
CPP = arm-elf-g++
OBJCOPY = arm-elf-objcopy
OBJDUMP = arm-elf-objdump
SIZE = arm-elf-size
NM = arm-elf-nm
REMOVE = rm -f
COPY = cp
----------------------------------

----------------------------------


# Define directories, if needed.
DIRARM = /home/user/gcc-arm
DIRARMBIN = $(DIRARM)/bin
DIRAVRUTILS = $(DIRARM)/utils/bin/
# Define programs and commands.
SHELL = sh
CC = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-gcc
CPP = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-g++
OBJCOPY = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-objcopy
OBJDUMP = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-objdump
SIZE = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-size
NM = $(DIRARMBIN)/arm-elf-nm
REMOVE = rm -f
COPY = cp
----------------------------------

Remember to change the DIRARM to include the actual location of the gcc-arm toolchain.

Now in netbeans, it was fairly easy to set up a gcc-arm profile. Under Tools->Options->C/C++. Add a new profile, the base directory should be the gcc-arm/bin/ directory, and fill in the appropriate binaries.

The hardest part was editing the headers and Makefile. Once that was taken care of, everything compiled fine. Just to quickly test the firmware, I changed the playlist title to “technomage musicbox” and started rocking out to YTCracker’s “I Am A Pirate,” which I should have put on his “I Did It My Way” (both tracks are off the Serious Business EP).

the code change compiled!

Hopefully other people will find this useful.