MacOS Quick Start

ATTENTION: This page is still a WIP. Usual disclaimers about not taking responsibility for your system disruption applies.

Note January 2023: a precompiled version of the Miosix toolchain for Mac OS is available in the Miosix Toolchain page.

Before you begin

This procedure has been tested on macOS Catalina 10.15. The Miosix toolchain has been successfully compiled using GCC 9.2.0, which can be installed using the Homebrew package manager.

Install Xcode

Install Xcode by downloading it from the Mac App Store here. This is needed for installing the XCode command line tools which in turn is needed by Homebrew.

Install Xcode Command Line Tools

Install the Command Line Tools by running the following command in terminal:

xcode-select --install

It is recommended to run the command even if Xcode and the Command Line Tools were already installed on your system, since the Command Line Tools installation may have been messed up by upgrading to 10.15 from a previous release.

Install Homebrew

Grab a copy of Homebrew and run the install script in one step using this command in terminal:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

If it complains about permission issues, then you have to fix it before you can continue. Since Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11, Apple introduced a new feature called System Integrity Protector (SIP), which prevents from writing to many system directories such as /usr, /System, /bin, regardless of whether or not you are root. Also, if you have never opened Xcode before, it will ask you to agree to the license by opening Xcode.app or running:

	sudo xcodebuild -license

System dependencies installation

Install GNU tar

Running the Miosix toolchain compilation script may give you an error related to extracting a file. Therefore, using GNU tar instead of Apple tar is suggested.

Run this command in terminal to grab the most recent packages list from Homebrew:

brew update

Run this command to install GNU tar:

brew install gnu-tar

Install GCC 9.2.0

Running the Miosix toolchain compilation script using Apple GCC has proven unsuccessful. That's why we need to install GCC 9.2.0 from Homebrew. Perform the steps below:

Run this command in terminal to grab the most recent packages list from Homebrew:

brew update

Run this command to install GCC 9.2.0:

brew install gcc@9

Symlink GCC 9.2.0 executables

First, you need to create appropriate symlinks within /usr/local/bin from the versioned name of gcc executables to generic ones. Run these commands from terminal:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/gcc-9 /usr/local/bin/gcc
ln -s /usr/local/bin/gcc-9 /usr/local/bin/cc
ln -s /usr/local/bin/g++-9 /usr/local/bin/g++
ln -s /usr/local/bin/cpp-9 /usr/local/bin/cpp
ln -s /usr/local/bin/c++-9 /usr/local/bin/c++

Please notice that gcc-9.2 has not been symlinked to ld has someone may expect, since it has proven prone to errors during the Miosix toolchain compilation. Instead, we are gonna use Apple own Clang ld as a linker.

Edit $PATH variable

Now you need to make sure that /usr/local/bin gets inspected before /usr/bin when looking for gcc, so that Homebrew GCC 9.2.0 will be called instead of Apple GCC. In order to do so, we are gonna modify the $PATH terminal variable. Run from terminal:

cd

To get into your home folder.

Run from terminal:

edit .bash_profile

To edit the bash profile script.

You need to add the following lines as they are:

#homebrew gcc
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
#gnu-tar
export PATH=/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin:$PATH

Save and close the file.

Then run from terminal:

source .bash_profile

in order to reload the bash profile script.

Check the installed packages

If everything went as supposed, running from terminal:

gcc -v

should return some text including:

gcc version 9.2.0 (Homebrew GCC 9.2.0_2)

While running from terminal:

ld -v

should return some text including:

LTO support using: LLVM version 11.0.3

Install the following dependencies

make, ncurses, byacc, flex, texinfo, patchutils, unzip, lzip, libelf, perl, expat, wget

Unfortunately they have to be installed one by one with brew.

GNU make will be installed as gmake, to use it as make, edit the PATH from the bashrc like:

PATH="/usr/local/opt/make/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Toolchain compilation and installation

Toolchain sources download

In order to download the kernel and toolchains sources, you need git. If you don't have it already, you can install it using Homebrew:

brew install git

From terminal, cd to a folder of your choice, making sure that the path from root to it doesn't contain spaces or special characters. Then run:

git clone https://miosix.org/git-public/miosix-kernel.git
cd miosix-kernel
git fetch origin

To select the development version of the kernel

git checkout -b testing origin/testing

Please note that currently, the master branch contains the stable 2.0 kernel, while the testing branch contains the current development version. Usually the latter contains the latest updates made, especially support packages for new boards, so its advised to use the code contained in this branch.

Make sure to be in a path without spaces, or compiling will fail.

Example:

/home/foo/temp                          OK
/home/foo/directory with spaces/temp    NO!!

move to the compiler directory:

cd miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/gcc-9.2.0-mp3.1

If you prefer to have the toolchain in a different folder from the kernel tree, move this folder in another directory and then continue.

Toolchain dependencies download

Now you need to run the dependencies download script. From terminal, run:

sh download.sh

from the folder where you performed the git clone command.

Toolchain compilation

System-wide installation of the toolchain is currently untested. It is then suggested to install it locally and then add its location the the $PATH. First, edit the install script located at:

miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/gcc-9.2.0-mp3.1/install-script.sh

such that at the end the first few lines looks as follow:

# Uncomment if installing globally on the system

#INSTALL_DIR=/opt/arm-miosix-eabi

#SUDO=sudo

# Uncomment if installing locally, sudo isn't necessary

INSTALL_DIR=`pwd`/gcc/arm-miosix-eabi

SUDO=

One can decide to install the toolchain globally, in that case uncomment the correct lines and substitute /opt with /usr/local/opt

We can now finally run the compilation script. From terminal, run:

sh install-script.sh -j'nproc'

At the end, if everything worked correctly, you'll find the toolchain at:

miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/gcc-9.2.0-mp3.1/gcc/arm-miosix-eabi/bin

Toolchain compilation and installation

Now you need to add the toolchain to your path. Edit the bash profile script and add the following lines:

#arm-miosix-eabi
export PATH={my-folder-of-choice-path}/miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/gcc-9.2.0-mp3.1/gcc/arm-miosix-eabi/bin:$PATH

where you have to replace {my-folder-of-choice-path} with the path of the folder where you run the git clone command.

Then run from terminal:

source .bash_profile

in order to reload the bash profile script.

Cleanup

You are now free to go back to Apple tar and GCC. In order to do so, edit the bash profile script and remove the following lines:

#homebrew gcc
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
#gnu-tar
export PATH=/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin:$PATH

Then run from terminal:

source .bash_profile

in order to reload the bash profile script.

In order to remove temporary and log files run from the terminal:

sh cleanup.sh

This script will remove log files and temporary files created during the installation process, but will keep the downloaded files, so that it will be possible to run install-script.sh again without the need for redownloading anything.

Kernel compilation

In order to configure and compile the kernel, please follow the steps outlined in the Linux Quick Start.

Flash and debug an STM32F4DISCOVERY board

Tools installation

In order to be able to flash and debug an STM32F4DISCOVERY board, you need the stlink tools suite. You can grab it from Homebrew running:

brew install stlink

Lastly, if you have a brand new board and QSTlink doesn't work you may take a look at this page.