MacOS Quick Start

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

Before you begin

This procedure has been tested on OS X El Capitain 10.11. The Miosix toolchain has been successfully compiled using GCC 4.9.3, 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 10.11 from a previous release.

Install Homebrew

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

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

If it complains about permission issues, then you have to fix it before you can continue. In 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. Apple is leaving /usr/local open for developers to use, so Homebrew can still be used as expected; however, performing a few steps may be required depending on you system, as outlined in the official Homebrew documentation here.

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 add the repository containing GNU tar to Homebrew:

brew tap homebrew/dupes

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 4.9.3

Running the Miosix toolchain compilation script using Apple GCC has proven unsuccessful. That's why we need to install GCC 4.9.3 from Homebrew. Perform the steps below:

Run this command in terminal to add the repository containing GCC 4.9.3 to Homebrew:

brew tap homebrew/versions

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

brew update

Run this command to install GCC 4.9.3:

brew install gcc49

Symlink GCC 4.9.3 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-4.9 /usr/local/bin/gcc
ln -s /usr/local/bin/gcc-4.9 /usr/local/bin/cc
ln -s /usr/local/bin/g++-4.9 /usr/local/bin/g++
ln -s /usr/local/bin/cpp-4.9 /usr/local/bin/cpp
ln -s /usr/local/bin/c++-4.9 /usr/local/bin/c++

Please notice that gcc-4.9 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 4.9.3 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 4.9.3 (Homebrew gcc49 4.9.3)

While running from terminal:

ld -v

should return some text including:

LTO support using: Apple LLVM 7.0.0

And finally running from terminal:

tar --version

should return some text including:

tar (GNU tar)

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.

Toolchain dependencies download

You need to fix a link in the Miosix toolchain dependencies download script, located at:

miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/download.sh

Replace the following line:

wget http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-current/mpfr-3.1.2.tar.xz

with:

wget http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-3.1.2/mpfr-3.1.2.tar.xz

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

sh miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/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/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
#SUDO=sudo
# Uncomment if installing locally, sudo isn't necessary
INSTALL_DIR=`pwd`/gcc
SUDO=

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

sh miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/install-script.sh

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

miosix-kernel/miosix/_tools/compiler/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/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.

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