Updating Bela

This material has been superseded. Visit learn.bela.io for the maintained version.

You can update the core code and the IDE with the latest fixes and improvements using the IDE or the Bela scripts.

It is recommended that you keep the code on your board always up to date with the latest releases from the github repo, to make sure you always have the latest features and bug fixes. Make sure you update your board at least once after flashing a new image, as the code contained in the image may be a few weeks old.

Note: the Bela image version on your board is older than v0.3, you will have to backup your projects, download a more recent image, and flash it to disk. To find out the Bela image version, run grep v0 /etc/motd in the console at the bottom of the IDE.

Updating with the update_board script

Before you start this process, make sure that all your projects are securely backed up somewhere. Updating the board should not affect your project folder, but better to be safe than sorry!

1. Plug in your Bela board to your computer via USB.

2. Download the latest version of the Bela repo from here: https://github.com/BelaPlatform/Bela/archive/master.zip

3. Unzip the archive and move it to a convenient folder on your computer.

4. Make sure that your board is plugged in and wait until it has finished booting.

5. In finder, navigate to the scripts folder inside the recently unzip repo and double click on update_board (update_board.sh on Windows machines. Note that you will need a terminal emulator and a bash shell to run the script. Installation instructions for Windows can be found here).

6. A terminal window will open up, you will be asked to type Y followed by Enter.

7. After a couple of minutes the board will be updated and you are ready to start using the new IDE!

Updating with the IDE

IMPORTANT INFORMATION! This procedure will only work when the version of the IDE in the board is more recent than 09/10/2019

To update to the latest version of Bela go to https://github.com/BelaPlatform/Bela and download the latest version of the Bela core code. Click Clone or download and then Download ZIP.

In the Bela IDE go to the Settings tab and click on Upload an update patch at the bottom of the page. This window will pop up:

Choose the .zip file on your computer and click Upload. This will automatically update Bela to the version you downloaded. Once the download is complete you will need to refresh the browser - this can sometimes take ten seconds or so.

Getting the experimental release

In the development of the Bela platform, we keep a stable branch (the master branch) which contains the improvements that have undergone some testing and are safe for everyone to use. We also maintain many unstable development branches which contain the latest features but are not yet 100% tested. In case you want to download the archive for a branch different from the default one, you can go through the procedure above selecting a different branch before hitting the download button:

Troubleshooting

Boards running Bela images earlier than v0.2.0a may issue the following error when building a project after updating to the latest Bela code:

Building pru_rtaudio.p
/bin/sh: 1:
pasm: not found
make: *** [include/pru_rtaudio_bin.h] Error 127

if that is the case, you need to install pasm, following the instructions here.