Adding ARM builds for Raspberry Pi and co.

[CRImier]

Hello!

I've managed to compile and run Arduino IDE 1.6.5 on a Raspberry Pi (2B), running Raspbian Jessie. I have added a new platform to build.xml, as well as replaced libastylej.so with a copy from Raspbian repos and all the avr-gcc&avrdude binaries by symlinks to the corresponding binaries on my system. It runs quite nice, I've uploaded a Blink sketch on an Arduino Pro Mini.

Is somebody interested in completing that so that Arduino could offer pre-built IDE archives for Raspberry Pi&ARM? Basically, all that's left is to package libastylej.so, avr-gcc and avrdude into tarballs, as it is already with Linux IDE archives, upload those archives on the official page (where the build script downloads them from) and finish the build.xml work. Then I guess even Raspbian repos could have it, as it'll be officially supported - and, honestly, being stuck on 1.0.5 sucks a lot.

I have the build.xml file in my copy of this repository (commit). I'm not making a pull request because it is far from complete, given that it copies libastylej.so from the system-wide libraries and does nothing about absence of avr-gcc and avrdude packages on Arduino website (I symlinked the binaries to system-wide for IDE to work). I've also run 'ant test' and it did well - only some tests related to autoformat feature failed, overall it was okay.

[CRImier]

I've also described the build process on my blog, if that helps.

[NicoHood]

I tried your tutorial.
I installed all needed packages except avr-g++. Couldnt find the package for some reason.
ant worked anyways and ant run as well. Starting directly from work/linux also works.

It just wont compile. And I also havent added the symlinks which might be the problem. It would be cool if you add the few commands which we need to link those files. It would be cool to already add this in the build process? Or maybe you could add it to the install script (also have a look at the current PR about the install script!).

So it might be just the symlinks for me. the eroor was a syntax error in avr-g++ by the way. The rest was super easy and it would be really cool to see this in the official repository from arduino github and the jessie repo of the raspi debian for pi2.

[CRImier]

I have met that syntax error with avr-g++ - something about symbol '(', right? That's what it says when version of avr-g++ is for x86, not ARM, even though that's certainly not the most correct error message ever. As far as I understood, you still do have x86 avr-g++ in the Arduino IDE folder, so this error makes sense.
Do you have 'gcc-avr' package installed? When it's installed, the 'avr-g++' binary can be found in /usr/bin. About symlinks - I'll go and make a script now.
Don't forget about apt-file - truly an indispensable tool for searching which package has a certain file in it. I use it about 10 times a day when compiling new things and such =)

Which PR about installer script are you talking about? I couldn't find a PR about that.

[CRImier]

So here's an one-liner, just execute it in the hardware/tools/avr/bin/ directory:

for i in *; do echo $i; rm $i; ln -s /usr/bin/$i $i; done

Worked for me, will add this to my blog entry now as well.

Also, which Raspbian release do you try this on? If it's Wheezy, that's be good, since most of the people use it =)

[ffissore]

In order to have a ARM compatible version, we need to pack everything we pack now, including astyle, all the toolchains (gcc, avrdude, bossac, openocd)
You may want to start from astyle repo https://github.com/arduino/astyle/ (it contains the scripts we use to build it)
You can then move to https://github.com/arduino/toolchain-avr : we already have an ARM script, but we have not tested it thoroughly.
And in case you'd ask "why don't you just use gcc provided by debian?" the answer is "every version of the IDE (win, mac, lin) must be equal to one another: relying on software we don't ship makes support harder"

[CRImier]

In this specific case, is there any kind of cross-compiling environment needed when compiling libastyle and binaries for ARM? I figure that your build environment is x86/x64, and I haven't yet compiled ARM things on x86, so I'm kinda confused =)

[ffissore]

we don't cross compile

[NicoHood]

Yes I got that symbol '(' error. Yes I've installed gcc-avr. But where to move which file? If you are doing a script then you may want to add the copy command for avr-g++ as well. Do I have to do this before the build or afterwards?

This is the PR I am talking about. You could add your script stuff here. Even though its just a trick right now, many people would appreciate it. #3226

ffissore is right about shipping a copy with the ide, so it works under every OS. I tried with a fresh noobs booted debian jessie (upgraded before). I am not sure if wheezy would work since avr-gcc 4.8.1 is only available on jessie.

But if we can fix those bugs we can probably see the IDE also running on wheezy.

[CRImier]

@NicoHood - Aha, so IMO Wheezy is out of question until we get all the things packaged, or alternatively those who need it can use packages from jessie (and hope it doesn't break things). I think I'll work on compiling&packaging things then.

You don't actually need to move files. All you need is to create symlinks using that one-liner - it deletes all the binaries (extracted from an archive meant for x86, so useless to us) and creates symlinks to according binaries in /usr/bin instead.

@ffissore What'd be the way then? As I understand, in order for the ARM compile scripts to be useful and to aid the creation of official ARM build, they have to be able to successfully produce ARM binaries on your build environment, which's most definitely ix86 arch. That sounds awfully like cross-compilation, and the fact that you don't use it isn't particularly surprising, considering that all the official builds at the moment are ix86, just that OSes change. How do you think, is it feasible that the Arduino IDE build&packaging process will involve cross-compilation in order to officially support ARM architecture? Or is there another way you could suggest?

[NicoHood]

I tried this with 1.6 RC1 once. You can set jessie as 2nd repository. But this will break weird things. You cannot download some normal wheezy packages etc. So I wouldnt do it again like this. shipping it with the ide is probably the best thing you could do.

Is this version fixed for pi2 or does it also work on the pi1? Or in other words: Can we improve the performence for pi2 maybe since it has 4 cores? I couldnt compile so I dont know if it uses all 4 cores at the same time. The underlying wheezy/jessie is still ARM6 from what I understood so we cant get ARM7 optimization? But what about the ubuntu mate release that's out now? Would the IDE work there as well?

[CRImier]

@NicoHood - I have only tested it on Pi2 so far, but I can also test it on Pi1B+ with Raspbian Jessie, which I'll do right now. I wonder if it'll break =) You're right about the whole thing still being ARMv6 - Raspbian repositories didn't get further than that AFAIK. Also, multicore support should be as good as Arduino IDE itself supports it, that is, if it does set '-j{cores}' flag when calling compiler/linker.
I figure the IDE will work on Ubuntu Mate, since it's shouldn't be that far from Jessie. However, this is nothing more than a wild guess and I'll test it as soon as I get a possibility to finally try it out.

[ShorTie8]

Other then the IDE there is no need to compile anything because it is all in apt-get.
Why recreate the wheel when the wheel spins fine ??

Have A Great Day
ShorTie

[CRImier]

@ShorTie8
The reason has been mentioned by @ffissore - it's ease of technical support, and I personally agree with this, especially given that it's basically a platform for MCU programming beginners, who do definitely need distraction-free environment in order to make the learning process more effective. They do the same for Linux i*86 as well. So far this approach can make it work for various distributions, regardless of a package manager. If it, as claimed, helps the maintainers make sure all components are interacting with each other well, I don't see a problem - just an advantage.
Also, if they were to rely on repositories, they'd need somebody to be package maintainers for all the distributions they want to support (this is open source, after all) - and as for now they support most of the distributions just fine, just not using the preferred way. I'd want to be a maintainer, at least for Debian and Ubuntu, but as for now I'm quite busy and can only do so much.
Also, once packed, it'll work for Wheezy as well, since (AFAIK) it's Wheezy that doesn't yet have AVR-GCC versions that Jessie has. I'll definitely test it when it's done.
So why make the wheel more complex when it's easier that way and spins fine?

[ffissore]

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