[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Cjw X]

I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4 processors
against the newlib library.

This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've
been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to
expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.

I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting to
go down the road of supporting RTOS's.

I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if
this interests the community.

Does this interest people?

-Chris
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[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH]

Hi Chris,

I have some boards from ST (Discovery and Disco), they are base on STM32 processor.
I was thinking about having support of those boards with buildroot, but never find time to check this out.
I know that buildroot has support of Blackfin processors, which are also Cortex M3/M4 based, but don?t know what would be the extra work to port this uClinux support to more Cortex M3/M4 processor.
What are you looking for? Do you plan to add support for uClinux, FreeRTOS, eCos, RTEMS or another operating system (perhaps in-house)?
For which kind of Cortex M3/M4 processor have you done the port?

Regards

Fabrice

Von: buildroot [mailto:buildroot-bounces at busybox.net] Im Auftrag von Cjw X
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 15. Januar 2015 23:58
An: buildroot at busybox.net
Betreff: [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4 processors against the newlib library.
This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.

I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting to go down the road of supporting RTOS's.
I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if this interests the community.

Does this interest people?
-Chris
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[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH]

I didn?t know ChibiOS, it seems to be interesting, but my interest is more focused on uClinux ;-)
I don?t have many extra time left, but perhaps I could give you some help.
Do you have publish your work on a platform like github/sourceforge or something like that?
What is your next step?
I have a stm32f4 discovery board, so I could help you on this platform. I?m not an expert, but want to learn more about uClinux and buildroot. I seems to be a good opportunity.

What are you next planned steps?

Regards
Fabrice

Von: cjwfirmware at gmail.com [mailto:cjwfirmware at gmail.com] Im Auftrag von Cjw X
Gesendet: Freitag, 16. Januar 2015 08:20
An: Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
Betreff: Re: [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

It is targeting stm32f4. Right now it is being developed against a discovery board, but it will eventually target my own board.
So far I've looked into
ChibiOS
uClinux
and Nuttx

Right now it is generating the toolchain with newlib and uClibc++. It is doing this as target arm-none-eabi-* since I've seen a variety of packages assume that cross compiler. (That is what arm's launchpad creates). I will also probably try and figure out how to integrate libopencm3.
My plan is it support the three above (eventually) for my own stuff. Right now I'm just feeling out if there is much community interest. There is a big difference in effort between "do it for me" and "do it for everyone" and I don't have huge amounts of extra time. I think this stuff is cool though, so I'm thinking other people might also.

Thanks,
-Chris




On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH <fabrice.mousset at geocept.com<mailto:fabrice.mousset@geocept.com>> wrote:
Hi Chris,

I have some boards from ST (Discovery and Disco), they are base on STM32 processor.
I was thinking about having support of those boards with buildroot, but never find time to check this out.
I know that buildroot has support of Blackfin processors, which are also Cortex M3/M4 based, but don?t know what would be the extra work to port this uClinux support to more Cortex M3/M4 processor.
What are you looking for? Do you plan to add support for uClinux, FreeRTOS, eCos, RTEMS or another operating system (perhaps in-house)?
For which kind of Cortex M3/M4 processor have you done the port?

Regards

Fabrice

Von: buildroot [mailto:buildroot-bounces at busybox.net<mailto:buildroot-bounces@busybox.net>] Im Auftrag von Cjw X
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 15. Januar 2015 23:58
An: buildroot at busybox.net<mailto:buildroot@busybox.net>
Betreff: [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4 processors against the newlib library.
This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.

I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting to go down the road of supporting RTOS's.
I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if this interests the community.

Does this interest people?
-Chris

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[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Hello,

On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:57:32 -0500, Cjw X wrote:

> I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4 processors
> against the newlib library.
> 
> This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've
> been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to
> expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.
> 
> I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting to
> go down the road of supporting RTOS's.
> 
> I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if
> this interests the community.
> 
> Does this interest people?

Support for Cortex-M3/M4 based platforms is definitely interesting.
However, I'm wondering if it really makes sense for Buildroot to
support non-Linux operating systems. To me, the main value of Buildroot
is the 1200+ packages that we have, and all of them are based on the
fact that you run a Linux kernel underneath.

What would Buildroot do for a newlib based system, except building the
toolchain? If it's really only about building the toolchain, then maybe
using Crosstool-NG is a better idea, since it already has newlib
support if I remember correctly.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Hello,

On Fri, 16 Jan 2015 07:07:25 +0000, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
wrote:

> I know that buildroot has support of Blackfin processors, which are
> also Cortex M3/M4 based, but don?t know what would be the extra work
> to port this uClinux support to more Cortex M3/M4 processor.

Blackfin processors are not Cortex M3/M4 based. Blackfin is a custom
DSP architecture, which has nothing to do with ARM Cortex M3/M4.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Hello,

A couple of mailing list best practices: please keep the messages on
the list (the reply from Cjw was only made to Fabrice), and please
avoid top posting: your replies should be *below* the text you are
replying to. Thanks.

On Fri, 16 Jan 2015 07:56:23 +0000, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
wrote:

> I didn?t know ChibiOS, it seems to be interesting, but my interest is more focused on uClinux ;-)
> I don?t have many extra time left, but perhaps I could give you some help.
> Do you have publish your work on a platform like github/sourceforge or something like that?
> What is your next step?
> I have a stm32f4 discovery board, so I could help you on this platform. I?m not an expert, but want to learn more about uClinux and buildroot. I seems to be a good opportunity.

uClinux is not really a different operating system. And in fact,
uClinux doesn't really exist anymore: it used to be a fork of the
Linux kernel to support MMU-less architectures. But this support has
now been merged back in the official Linux kernel.

So for example, on Blackfin (which is an MMU-less architecture), you
can run the official Linux kernel. You can continue to call that
uClinux if you want, but it really has nothing to do anymore with the
original uClinux project.

Buildroot already "supports" uClinux in the sense that it supports the
MMU-less Blackfin architecture, so it should be easily applicable to
other MMU-less architectures such as Cortex-M3/M4 based platforms.

I have a Cortex-M3 platform running Linux, but it has so little RAM
that even the minimal Buildroot filesystem cannot boot on it. I found
this a bit too limited and decided to not really spend more time on
this. But other Cortex-M3 platforms with more RAM are available (8 MB
and more), which should make this more feasible.

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH]

Oh sorry, I've got a mistake about blackfine and analog devices  ADu processors family!

Regards

Fabrice


-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Thomas Petazzoni [mailto:thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com] 
Gesendet: Freitag, 16. Januar 2015 09:24
An: Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
Cc: buildroot at busybox.net
Betreff: Re: [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

Hello,

On Fri, 16 Jan 2015 07:07:25 +0000, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
wrote:

> I know that buildroot has support of Blackfin processors, which are 
> also Cortex M3/M4 based, but don?t know what would be the extra work 
> to port this uClinux support to more Cortex M3/M4 processor.

Blackfin processors are not Cortex M3/M4 based. Blackfin is a custom DSP architecture, which has nothing to do with ARM Cortex M3/M4.

Best regards,

Thomas
--
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Fabrice Mousset,

On Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:35:52 +0000, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
wrote:

> Oh sorry, I've got a mistake about blackfine and analog devices  ADu
> processors family!

I think I said in another e-mail to avoid top posting. Can you please
make an effort, and use the mailing list best practices?

Please read http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html.

Thanks,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Cjw X]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 2:56 AM, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH <
fabrice.mousset@geocept.com> wrote:

>  I didn?t know ChibiOS, it seems to be interesting, but my interest is
> more focused on uClinux ;-)
>
> I don?t have many extra time left, but perhaps I could give you some help.
>
> Do you have publish your work on a platform like github/sourceforge or
> something like that?
>
> What is your next step?
>
> I have a stm32f4 discovery board, so I could help you on this platform.
> I?m not an expert, but want to learn more about uClinux and buildroot. I
> seems to be a good opportunity.
>
>
>
> What are you next planned steps?
>
>
Well, right now I'm working on integrating OS support. Unfortunately, I
can't post the OS integration support until hardware is done and publicly
released. Then I'm guessing it will be hosted on my github account.
https://github.com/vxmdesign

I can release the toolchain part. Here is a tar of the repo which builds a
toolchain that works for the STM32F407 on the discovery board.
 http://www.vxmdesign.com/images/prjpluto.tar.gz

The defconfig is pluto_defconfig

Check it out.

-Chris


>
> Regards
>
> Fabrice
>
>
>
>
> *Von:* cjwfirmware at gmail.com [mailto:cjwfirmware at gmail.com] *Im Auftrag
> von *Cjw X
> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 16. Januar 2015 08:20
> *An:* Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH
> *Betreff:* Re: [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib
>
>
>
> It is targeting stm32f4. Right now it is being developed against a
> discovery board, but it will eventually target my own board.
>
> So far I've looked into
>
> ChibiOS
>
> uClinux
> and Nuttx
>
>
>
> Right now it is generating the toolchain with newlib and uClibc++. It is
> doing this as target arm-none-eabi-* since I've seen a variety of packages
> assume that cross compiler. (That is what arm's launchpad creates). I will
> also probably try and figure out how to integrate libopencm3.
>
> My plan is it support the three above (eventually) for my own stuff. Right
> now I'm just feeling out if there is much community interest. There is a
> big difference in effort between "do it for me" and "do it for everyone"
> and I don't have huge amounts of extra time. I think this stuff is cool
> though, so I'm thinking other people might also.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Fabrice Mousset | GEOCEPT GmbH <
> fabrice.mousset at geocept.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi Chris,
>
>
>
> I have some boards from ST (Discovery and Disco), they are base on STM32
> processor.
>
> I was thinking about having support of those boards with buildroot, but
> never find time to check this out.
>
> I know that buildroot has support of Blackfin processors, which are also
> Cortex M3/M4 based, but don?t know what would be the extra work to port
> this uClinux support to more Cortex M3/M4 processor.
>
> What are you looking for? Do you plan to add support for uClinux,
> FreeRTOS, eCos, RTEMS or another operating system (perhaps in-house)?
>
> For which kind of Cortex M3/M4 processor have you done the port?
>
>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> Fabrice
>
>
>
> *Von:* buildroot [mailto:buildroot-bounces at busybox.net] *Im Auftrag von *Cjw
> X
> *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 15. Januar 2015 23:58
> *An:* buildroot at busybox.net
> *Betreff:* [Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib
>
>
>
> I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4
> processors against the newlib library.
>
> This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've
> been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to
> expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.
>
> I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting
> to go down the road of supporting RTOS's.
>
> I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if
> this interests the community.
>
> Does this interest people?
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
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[Buildroot] support for cortex m3/m4 with newlib

[Cjw X]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 3:22 AM, Thomas Petazzoni <
thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:57:32 -0500, Cjw X wrote:
>
> > I've been working on modifying buildroot to support cortex m3/m4
> processors
> > against the newlib library.
> >
> > This way I can use buildroot to build RTOS's for those processors. I've
> > been using buildroot for years to build linux systems and I would like to
> > expand that for the smaller processors with different operating systems.
> >
> > I am making some progress. The toolchain already works. I'm now starting
> to
> > go down the road of supporting RTOS's.
> >
> > I'm going to keep going regardless, but I wanted to check to find out if
> > this interests the community.
> >
> > Does this interest people?
>
> Support for Cortex-M3/M4 based platforms is definitely interesting.
> However, I'm wondering if it really makes sense for Buildroot to
> support non-Linux operating systems. To me, the main value of Buildroot
> is the 1200+ packages that we have, and all of them are based on the
> fact that you run a Linux kernel underneath.
>
>
I've been using buildroot for years, and it is my distro I prefer to use if
I have an option. I really like the package support, but that has never
been my reason for choosing it. If I want massive package support, Debian
has good arm support, and Yocto/OpenEmbedded has thousands of packages.

I go to buildroot because it is the best most reliable and consistent way
to get a toolchain/os/and host support working for a piece of hardware. It
is extremely easy to modify and maintain and source control. Buildroot is
built on standard tools with no weird dependencies so it works on every
linux distro without much hassle. I can easily maintain several different
toolchains for different hardware on the same system. And while the
packages natively supported is good, it is basically trivial to add any new
package to it.

This is why I use it, why I encourage my clients to use it, and why I would
like to see it extended to other small-os targets on the lower-end
processors.



> What would Buildroot do for a newlib based system, except building the
> toolchain? If it's really only about building the toolchain, then maybe
> using Crosstool-NG is a better idea, since it already has newlib
> support if I remember correctly.
>
> I was never huge fan of crosstool-ng. I could always get it to work, but
it was never as reliable at providing a tool chain/os/ and host support for
my target as buildroot has been.

That is how I tend to feel about it. The community may feel differently.

-Chris

-"It's not programming if you don't need a multimeter"



> Best regards,
>
> Thomas
> --
> Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
> Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
> http://free-electrons.com
>
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