Setting Up Development Environment For RT-Thread in a Linux Machine
Background
My project recently got accepted to 2023 IoT contest by RT-Thread and I am so excited to get started. I new beginner to RT-Thread and I am going to document my journey here. I will be using a Linux machine for my development.
Our project, Smart Beehive aims to improve way of beekeeping in Kenya by leveraging IoT technologies. We will be using CH32V208W-R0 Development board that will be shipped to us by RT-Thread.
Introduction to RT-Thread
RT-Thread is Free and Open source, Embedded real-time operating RTOS licensed under Apache License 2.0 (From version 3.1.0). It supports plethora of architectures and Microcontrollers.
It’s also designed for resource-constrained devices, the minimum kernel requires only 1.2KB of RAM and 3 KB of Flash
The architectures include:
- ARM Cortex-M0/M0+/M3/M4/M7/M23/M33/R4/A8/A9
- ARM7/9/11
- RISC-V
The Microcontrollers it can support can be found here: Supported MCU. It is also Feature rich, More information can be found here
RT-Thread Architecture
RT-Thread is rich in components and it’s architecture is shown below:
The Layers includes:
- Kernel layer - This is the core of RT-Thread, it impliments objects such as multi-threading and its scheduling, semaphore, mailbox, message queue, memory management, timer,etc.
- Components and Service layer - They are based on upper level of kernel layer, and provide a lot of components and services, such as device virtual file system, device frameworks, Network frameworks, etc.
- RT-Thread Software package - A general-purpose software component running on the RT-Thread IoT operating system platform for different application areas, consisting of description information, source code or library files.
Prerequisites
Although RT-Thread Studio which is one stop development tool is available, Linux users can’t take advantage of it since it’s only available for Windows. I will be setting up environment such way we can use any other IDE like VS code to write and compile the code in Linux.
Install Toolchain Dependencies
Install the following dependencies in your Debian/Ubuntu machine:
1sudo apt-get install build-essential git python3 python3-pip scons qemu qemu-system-arm scons libncurses5-dev wget curl
Installing ARM toolchain
I made a bash script to simplify the process of installing ARM and RISC-V toolchain. You can run it by running the following command on your terminal:
1curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/k-kipruto/Smart_Beehive/main/tools/gcc-arm.sh | bash
Once ARM toolchain is installed using the script, you can test if the toolchain is working by running the following command:
1arm-none-eabi-gcc --version
If you get any error, open an issue on this repository
https://github.com/k-kipruto/Smart_Beehive
Installing RISC-V toolchain
1curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/k-kipruto/Smart_Beehive/main/tools/gcc-riscv.sh | bash
Once RISC-V toolchain is installed using the script, you can test if the toolchain is working by running the following command:
1riscv-none-embed-gcc --print-multi-lib
Creating New Project in VS Code
To add new project in VS Code, You go to files open folder and then create a new folder for your project
It’s always a good practice to initialize a git repository for your project. You can do that by running the following commands:
1echo "# YOUR-REPOSITORY-NAME" >> README.md
2git init
3git add README.md
4git commit -m "first commit"
5git branch -M main
6git remote add origin git@github.com:YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/YOUR-REPOSITORY-NAME.git
7git push -u origin main
Adding RT-Thread to your project
To add RT-Thread to your project, you need to add the RT-Thread repository as git submodule to your project folder. You can do that by running the following command:
1git submodule add -b master https://github.com/RT-Thread/rt-thread.git
RT-Thread git submodule will look like this:
In RT-Thread they have the following folders:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| BSP | Board Support Package based on the porting of various development boards |
| components | Components, such as finsh shell, file system, protocol stack etc. |
| documentation | Related documents, like coding style, doxygen etc. |
| examples | Related sample code |
| include | Head files of RT-Thread kernel |
| libcpu | CPU porting code such as ARM/MIPS/RISC-V etc. |
| src | The source files for the RT-Thread kernel. |
| tools | The script files for the RT-Thread command build tool. |
Start RT-Thread Qemu Simulation Project
Under BSP folder, there are various boards that are supported by RT-Thread. We will be using qemu-vexpress-a9 for our project. You can find the board under bsp/qemu-vexpress-a9 folder.
To copy to our project, we will use the following command:
1cp -r rt-thread/bsp/qemu-vexpress-a9/ ./
This will copy the board to our project root directory.
After that we need to install ENV and Configure BSP.
1cd qemu-vexpress-a9
2export RTT_ROOT=../rt-thread
3export RTT_EXEC_PATH=/opt/gcc-arm-none-eabi/bin/
4source ~/.env/env.sh
5scons --menuconfig
- First command will change directory to the board folder
- Second command will export RTT_ROOT variable which is the path to RT-Thread root directory
- Third command will export RTT_EXEC_PATH variable which is the path to ARM toolchain
- Fourth command will source the env.sh file which will set the environment variables so that we can update the packages with pkgs –update command
- Fifth command will open the menuconfig where we can configure the BSP
When you run scons –menuconfig command, you will get the following output where you will configure your RT-Thread project. Use arrow keys to navigate the menu. After you are done save your changes and press ESC key twice to exit the menuconfig.
You can now run the pkgs –update command to update the packages.
1pkgs --update
The setup is now complete and you can now compile the project by running the following command:
1scons
This will build the project and generate the elf file which you can run on Qemu.
Running the project on Qemu
To run the project on Qemu, you need to run the following command:
1./qemu.sh
