MSXII Development Environment

Owned by Calder Kitagawa
Last updated: Dec 30, 2020 by Avery Chiu

Follow Software 101 to get started. This page is mostly informational.



TL;DR: Installation Instructions

Note: Ensure that before proceeding with the installation process that the STLink and USB device is disconnected, otherwise the USB filter will not pass the USB device through to the VM.

Windows

First make sure all these prerequisites are installed. The installation steps will fail if these are not installed.

Note: If any of the vagrant commands gives an error, you might need to have VT-x/AMD-v enabled. This can be done through your BIOS settings (the setting is probably called Intel(R) Virtualization Technology, or something).

Prerequisites

Using Git Bash, clone the box repository somewhere

git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/box.git && cd box/

Then start the box using

vagrant up && vagrant reload

This will download the Vagrant box, which might take a while.

Then, to access the box, ssh in

vagrant ssh

These 3 commands only need to be run the first time you start working with uwmidsun/box. More details can be found in the README.md file.

The shared/ directory will be shared between your host operating system and the virtual environmnent (/home/vagrant/shared/). You can clone the uw-midsun/firmware repo here from the ssh session, and then use your editor of choice from your host operating system

cd ~/shared/
git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/firmware.git && cd firmware

Then, ensure that you can build the code using make

make build_all

macOS

First make sure all these prerequisites are installed. The installation steps will fail if these are not installed.

Note: There's a regression in VirtualBox that prevents USB passthrough from working correctly with STLink/JTag. On a Mac, ensure that you install VirtualBox 5.0.8, and the 5.0.8 Extension Pack.

Prerequisites

First, make sure git is installed

brew install git

Then clone the uw-midsun/box repository somewhere

git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/box.git && cd box/

And start the box using

vagrant up && vagrant reload

This will download the Vagrant box, which might take a while.

Then, to access the box, ssh in

vagrant ssh

These 3 commands only need to be run the first time you start working with uwmidsun/box. More details can be found in the README.md file.

The shared/ directory will be shared between your host operating system and the virtual environment (/home/vagrant/shared/). You can clone the uw-midsun/firmware repo here from the ssh session, and then use your editor of choice from your host operating system

cd ~/shared/
git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/firmware.git && cd firmware

Then, ensure that you can build the code using make

make build_all

Linux

These commands are for a Debian-based distribution (like Ubuntu).

Prerequisites

Make sure git is installed

sudo apt-get install git


After installing VirtualBox, you'll have to add your user to the vboxusers group, so that the virtual machine can access your USB devices.

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER

Now reboot your machine.

Then clone the uw-midsun/box somewhere

git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/box.git && cd box/

And start the box using

vagrant up && vagrant reload

This will download the Vagrant box, which might take a while.

Then, to access the box, ssh in

vagrant ssh

These 3 commands only need to be run the first time you start working with uwmidsun/box. More details can be found in the README.md file.

The shared/ directory will be shared between your host operating system and the virtual environmnent (/home/vagrant/shared/). You can clone the uw-midsun/firmware repo here from the ssh session, and then use your editor of choice from your host operating system

cd ~/shared/
git clone https://github.com/uw-midsun/firmware.git && cd firmware

Then, ensure that you can build the code using make

make build_all

Background Information

You can refrain from downloading anything on the linked websites unless it is in the Installation section—we have set up a Vagrant box that packages the development environment for you. This guide is meant to help you understand the toolchain required for developing embedded software for the solar car. It aims to be a comprehensive guide to getting you to the point where you can start developing as soon as you feel comfortable with the C paradigms for embedded programming.

Prerequisites

Before we get started if you have not yet done so, please read up on Software in particular, the Coding Standards! These will be necessary to actually do any development on the car. 

Architecture and Libraries

The architecture we will be using on MSXII is the stm32f0xx variant of the ARM Cortex M0 MCU. This architecture is supported by both the CMSIS ARM Core M0 Library and STM Peripherals Library. Specific documentation for these libraries can be found on the Software Resources page of confluence. 

Supported Development Toolchain

Compiler

A compiler builds human readable source code into a machine readable target language, usually a machine executable or binary for a specific architecture. GCC ARM compiles C code into machine readable .elf, .hex or .bin files which can be flashed onto the MCU. GCC ARM is the standard open source compiler for ARM architecture, which is also what we're using. Compilers are powerful and often catch typos, errors, and warnings; they also optimize code for efficiency or size. The compiler flags set these behaviours of the compiler.

Build Tools

Build tools usually instruct the compiler on where the source files it is building are located and which files to look at in order to build the target program. Often a Linker will be used with a Makefile to build a collection of C and header files into a standard library which can be included in your program. GNU Make and GNU Linker (aka ld) are long-standing open source standard build tools used by many developers (including us!), although many alternatives do exist.

Linter

A linter is a program that checks the style of source code for errors. Some linters also perform static analysis, ours does not, which look to catch programming errors before the code is executed. cpplint is Google's open source linter for C/C++ programs, note that our Coding Standards closely follow Google's and as a result, this linter works well for us. The linter has been modified to support some slightly different standards and will be less pedantic.

Flasher

A flasher will transfer firmware (our compiled program) onto the MCU. Typically, this is done with a special cable or by a chip on the PCB and requires flashing software to transfer the contents of the source code into the memory of the MCU. For our purposes, we will be using st-link with GDB for debug which is the chip manufacturer supported method, or OpenOCD, the open source equivalent.

IDE

Just about any text editor is supported, since you can perform builds and flashing via the Vagrant box, using the shared/ directory between your host operating system and the Vagrant image.

Some recommendations that core members like include Vim, Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code.

Source Control

We use GitHub for our source and versioning control. In order to contribute to the codebase, you will also need to start using GitHub. If you are new to GitHub you may want to check out these guides. We have tight controls on out git repositories and require all commits to come from pull requests and that they are squashed prior to submitting.


Dependencies

These are dependencies installed on our current VM: https://app.vagrantup.com/uwmidsun/boxes/box