Difference between revisions of "Building for Raspbian"

Revision as of 11:13, 6 September 2016

Introduction

Ultibo core is currently made available as a Windows installer download as well as various Windows tools, however there is nothing specific about the source code or modifications to Free Pascal that are dependent on Windows and some may choose to use it on other platforms such as Linux or Mac. While we are currently unable to provide prepackaged installations for Linux in the form of DEB or RPM files we have created a set of instructions for building the necessary items from source in order to provide similar functionality to the Windows platform.

Please note that because these instructions require you to build all of the components from source and possibly install additional packages onto your Linux installation you should be familiar with using the command line and confident with the tools available. These instructions are fully tested and proven to work, however we cannot provide support for individual cases if you experience issues in completing the steps below.

Prerequisites

The instructions below detail the process of building both the modified Free Pascal compiler and the Ultibo RTL in order to create a working configuration that allows developing Ultibo applciations.

This process was tested and developed using the latest Raspbian Jessie from the Raspberry Pi downloads page, at the time of writing this has a release date of 27 May 2016 however it is possible that later or earlier versions may also work. There is at least one required package that is not available for Raspbian Wheezy versions.

In order to avoid any conflict with official FPC releases these instructions install all components into a folder within your home directory, if you follow these instructions the Ultibo version of Free Pascal as well as the RTL and sources will be located in the /home/pi/ultibo/core folder.

Currently Raspbian does not provide a package for the 3.0.0 release of Free Pascal, this version is needed as the starting point for these instructions and the following will NOT work if you start with version 2.6.4 which is the most recent version provided in the official Raspbian packages.

The simplest way we know to get a fully working installation of Free Pascal 3.0.0 is to follow the instructions at GetLazarus.org which will by default install a working copy in the folder /home/pi/Development/FreePascal that can be deleted later if you choose.

Building Free Pascal (Ultibo Edition)

Assuming you have a working FPC 3.0.0 installation as discussed above, you can now proceed with the first stage of the process which is to build a Raspbian native version of the Ultibo edition of FPC.

These instructions assume that FPC 3.0.0 from GetLazarus was installed to:

/home/pi/Development/FreePascal/fpc/bin

You should now download the sources of the FPC Ultibo edition from GitHub and unzip the contents to the folder:

/home/pi/ultibo/core

After extracting the files rename the folder FPC-master to fpc so the contents of the zip will be in /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc

Now download the source of Ultibo core from GitHub and extract the ultibo folder to the location:

/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source/rtl

Once this is done, open a terminal window and change to the folder containing the Ultibo sources:

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source

Add the path to FPC 3.0.0 to the environment:

export PATH=/home/pi/Development/FreePascal/fpc/bin:$PATH

Do the following steps in order, checking that each was completed successfully before continuing:

make distclean

make all OPT=-dFPC_ARMHF

make install OPT=-dFPC_ARMHF PREFIX=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc

Once those steps have completed you should now have a Raspbian native version of the FPC Ultibo edition. Copy it to the bin directory as follows so we can find it later:

cp /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source/compiler/ppcarm /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/ppcarm

Run the following to check that it shows as version 3.1.1 and lists ultibo under the supported targets.

/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc -i 

Use fpcmkcfg to create our default configuration file like this:

/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpcmkcfg -d basepath=$HOME/ultibo/core/fpc/lib/fpc/3.1.1 -o /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc.cfg

Installing the arm-none-eabi Toolchain

You may wonder why a toolchain is required when Raspbian runs native on the Raspberry Pi and therefore we are not cross compiling to create our Ultibo applications, the reasons are many but simply the tools included with Linux are configured for Linux specific settings which are not suitable for bare metal development, see this page for more information.

On Raspbian Jessie the arm-none-eabi tools are available as a package which can be installed like this:

sudo apt-get install -y binutils-arm-none-eabi

Once completed we can move on to building the Ultibo RTL.

Building the Ultibo RTL

The Ultibo RTL comes in 2 versions, one for ARMv6 which works on the Raspberry Pi A/B/A+/B+/Zero and another for ARMv7 which only works on Raspberry Pi 2B and 3B. These instructions allow for both to exist in different folders so you can have both versions available. If you choose not to build one or the other simply skip the relevant steps, you will need to perform this process each time you download an updated copy of the Ultibo RTL.

Ultibo RTL for ARMv7

Open a new terminal window (NOT the one you used above !!) and change to the source folder

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source

Export to path to our FPC 3.1.1 Ultibo edition:

export PATH=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin:$PATH

Build the ARMv7 RTL as follows, checking that each step was successful before continuing:

make rtl_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make rtl OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make rtl_install CROSSINSTALL=1 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc INSTALL_UNITDIR=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/rtl

Packages for ARMv7

Open a new terminal or continue with the one used to build the RTL, change to the source folder and ensure the path is updated:

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source

export PATH=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin:$PATH

Build the ARMv7 Packages using the following commands:

make rtl_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH -Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/rtl" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages_install CROSSINSTALL=1 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV7A -CfVFPV3 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv7a FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc INSTALL_UNITDIR=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/packages

Ultibo RTL for ARMv6

The process for the ARMv6 RTL is very similar but there are many differences in the parameters, careful you don't use the wrong ones.

Open a new terminal window and change to the source folder

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source

Export to path to our FPC 3.1.1 Ultibo edition:

export PATH=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin:$PATH

Build the ARMv7 RTL as follows, checking that each step was successful before continuing:

make rtl_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make rtl OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make rtl_install CROSSINSTALL=1 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc INSTALL_UNITDIR=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv6-ultibo/rtl

Packages for ARMv6

Open a new terminal or continue with the one used to build the RTL, change to the source folder and ensure the path is updated:

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/source

export PATH=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin:$PATH

Build the ARMv6 Packages as follows:

make rtl_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages_clean CROSSINSTALL=1 OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH -Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv6-ultibo/rtl" FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc

make packages_install CROSSINSTALL=1 BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-none-eabi- FPCFPMAKE=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc CROSSOPT="-CpARMV6 -CfVFPV2 -CIARM -OoFASTMATH" OS_TARGET=ultibo CPU_TARGET=arm SUBARCH=armv6 FPC=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/fpc INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc INSTALL_UNITDIR=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv6-ultibo/packages

Creating the Configuration files

To allow switching between ARMv6 and ARMv7 the Ultibo installation includes configuration files that are passed to FPC to specify certain parameters for each model, you can easily create these for Raspbian as well like this.

Open a terminal window and change to the location where FPC Ultibo edition is installed:

cd /home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin

Create a new rpi.cfg file:

nano rpi.cfg

And paste these lines into the file:

#
# Raspberry Pi (A/B/A+/B+/Zero) specific config file
#
-CfVFPV2
-CIARM
-OoFASTMATH
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv6-ultibo/rtl
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv6-ultibo/packages

Save the file and do the same for the rpi2.cfg and rpi3.cfg files:

Contents of rpi2.cfg

#
# Raspberry Pi 2B specific config file
#
-CfVFPV3
-CIARM
-OoFASTMATH
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/rtl
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/packages

Contents of rpi3.cfg

#
# Raspberry Pi 3B specific config file
#
-CfVFPV3
-CIARM
-OoFASTMATH
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/rtl
-Fu/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/units/armv7-ultibo/packages

Compiling an Application

Compiling an application from the command line is quite simple, you just need to remember some extra parameters because of the different environment. To compile something like the Hello World example open a terminal window, change to the folder where the application is located and add the path to FPC 3.1.1 Ultibo edition like this:

export PATH=/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin:$PATH

Then compile the application using this command:

fpc -B -Tultibo -Parm -CpARMV7A -WpRPI2B -XParm-none-eabi- @/home/pi/ultibo/core/fpc/bin/rpi2.cfg -O2 HelloWorld.lpr

This example is for a Raspberry Pi 2B but can easily be adjusted for any other model by changing the appropriate parameters.