GNU MCU Eclipse OpenOCD - the build scripts

These are the scripts and additional files required to build the GNU MCU Eclipse OpenOCD.

This release follows the official OpenOCD.

The build scripts use the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of elaborate build environments based on GCC 7.4 (Docker containers for GNU/Linux and Windows or a custom HomeBrew for MacOS).

Repository URLs

• the GNU MCU Eclipse OpenOCD Git remote URL to clone from is https://github.com/gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd.git
• the OpenOCD Git remote URL is https://git.code.sf.net/p/openocd/code

Add a remote named openocd, and pull the OpenOCD master → master.

Download the build scripts repo

The build script is available from GitHub and can be viewed online.

To download it, clone the gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd-build Git repo, including submodules.

$ rm -rf ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git
$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd-build.git \
  ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git

To use the develop branch of the build scripts, use:

$ rm -rf ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git
$ git clone --recurse-submodules -b develop https://github.com/gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd-build.git \
  ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git

The Work folder

The script creates a temporary build Work/openocd-${version} folder in the user home. Although not recommended, if for any reasons you need to change the location of the Work folder, you can redefine WORK_FOLDER_PATH variable before invoking the script.

Changes

Compared to the original OpenOCD distribution, there should be no functional changes.

How to build distributions

Prerequisites

The prerequisites are common to all binary builds. Please follow the instructions in the separate Prerequisites for building binaries page and return when ready.

Preload the Docker images

Docker does not require to explicitly download new images, but does this automatically at first use.

However, since the images used for this build are relatively large, it is recommended to load them explicitly before starting the build:

$ bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh preload-images

The result should look similar to:

$ docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ilegeul/centos      6-xbb-v2.1          3644716694e8        2 weeks ago         2.99GB
ilegeul/centos32    6-xbb-v2.1          921d03805e50        2 weeks ago         2.91GB
hello-world         latest              f2a91732366c        2 months ago        1.85kB

Update git repos

To keep the development repository in sync with the original OpenOCD repository and the RISC-V repository:

• checkout master
• pull from openocd/master
• checkout gnu-mcu-eclipse-dev
• merge master
• add a tag like v0.10.0-8-20180512 after each public release (mind the inner version -8-)

Prepare release

To prepare a new release, first determine the OpenOCD version (like 0.10.0) and update the scripts/VERSION file. The format is 0.10.0-8. The fourth digit is the GNU MCU Eclipse release number of this version.

Add a new set of definitions in the scripts/container-build.sh, with the versions of various components.

Update README.md

If necessary, update the main README.md with informations related to the build. Information related to the content should be updated in the README-<version>.md.

Create README-<version>.md

Create a copy of the previous one and update.

Update CHANGELOG.txt

Check openocd-build.git/CHANGELOG.txt and add the new release.

Build

Although it is perfectly possible to build all binaries in a single step on a macOS system, due to Docker specifics, it is faster to build the GNU/Linux and Windows binaries on a GNU/Linux system and the macOS binary separately.

Build the GNU/Linux and Windows binaries

The current platform for GNU/Linux and Windows production builds is an Ubuntu 17.10 VirtualBox image running on a macMini with 16 GB of RAM and a fast SSD.

Before starting a multi-platform build, check if Docker is started:

$ docker info

To build both the 32/64-bit Windows and GNU/Linux versions, use --all; to build selectively, use --linux64 --win64 or --linux32 --win32 (GNU/Linux can be built alone; Windows also requires the GNU/Linux build).

$ rm -rf ${HOME}/Work/openocd-*
$ bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --all

To build one of the previous versions:

$ RELEASE_VERSION=0.10.0-8 bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --all

Several hours later, the output of the build script is a set of 4 files and their SHA signatures, created in the deploy folder:

$ ls -l deploy
total 10940
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg 2655896 May 12 22:39 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-centos32.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg     126 May 12 22:39 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-centos32.tgz.sha
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg 2590467 May 12 22:27 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-centos64.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg     126 May 12 22:27 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-centos64.tgz.sha
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg 2910732 May 12 22:45 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-win32.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg     123 May 12 22:45 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-win32.zip.sha
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg 2957245 May 12 22:34 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-win64.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 ilg ilg     123 May 12 22:34 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-win64.zip.sha

To copy the files from the build machine to the current development machine, open the deploy folder in a terminal and use scp:

$ cd ${HOME}/Work/openocd-*/deploy
$ scp * [email protected]:Downloads/gme-binaries/oocd

Build the macOS binary

The current platform for macOS production builds is a macOS 10.10.5 VirtualBox image running on the same macMini with 16 GB of RAM and a fast SSD.

To build the latest macOS version, with the same timestamp as the previous build:

$ rm -rf ${HOME}/Work/openocd-*
$ caffeinate bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --osx --date YYYYMMDD-HHMM

To build one of the previous macOS versions:

$ RELEASE_VERSION=0.10.0-8 caffeinate bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --osx --date YYYYMMDD-HHMM

For consistency reasons, the date should be the same as the GNU/Linux and Windows builds.

Several hours later, the output of the build script is a compressed archive and its SHA signature, created in the deploy folder:

$ ls -l deploy
total 4944
-rw-r--r--  1 ilg  staff  2524910 May 12 23:19 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-macos.tgz
-rw-r--r--  1 ilg  staff      123 May 12 23:19 gnu-mcu-eclipse-openocd-0.10.0-8-20180512-1921-macos.tgz.sha

To copy the files from the build machine to the current development machine, open the deploy folder in a terminal and use scp:

$ cd ${HOME}/Work/openocd-*/deploy
$ scp * [email protected]:Downloads/gme-binaries/oocd

Subsequent runs

Separate platform specific builds

Instead of --all, you can use any combination of:

--win32 --win64 --linux32 --linux64

Please note that, due to the specifics of the GCC build process, the Windows build requires the corresponding GNU/Linux build, so --win32 alone is equivalent to --linux32 --win32 and --win64 alone is equivalent to --linux64 --win64.

clean

To remove most build temporary files, use:

$ bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --all clean

To also remove the library build temporary files, use:

$ bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --all cleanlibs

To remove all temporary files, use:

$ bash ~/Downloads/openocd-build.git/scripts/build.sh --all cleanall

Instead of --all, any combination of --win32 --win64 --linux32 --linux64 will remove the more specific folders.

For production builds it is recommended to completely remove the build folder.

--develop

For performance reasons, the actual build folders are internal to each Docker run, and are not persistent. This gives the best speed, but has the disadvantage that interrupted builds cannot be resumed.

For development builds, it is possible to define the build folders in the host file system, and resume an interrupted build.

--debug

For development builds, it is also possible to create everything with -g -O0 and be able to run debug sessions.

Interrupted builds

The Docker scripts run with root privileges. This is generally not a problem, since at the end of the script the output files are reassigned to the actual user.

However, for an interrupted build, this step is skipped, and files in the install folder will remain owned by root. Thus, before removing the build folder, it might be necessary to run a recursive chown.

Install

The procedure to install GNU MCU Eclipse OpenOCD is platform specific, but relatively straight forward (a .zip archive on Windows, a compressed tar archive on macOS and GNU/Linux).

A portable method is to use xpm:

$ xpm install --global @gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd

More details are available on the How to install the OpenOCD binaries? page.

After install, the package should create a structure like this (only the first two depth levels are shown):

$ tree -L 2 /Users/ilg/Library/xPacks/\@gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd/0.10.0-8.1/.content/
/Users/ilg/Library/xPacks/\@gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd/0.10.0-8.1/.content/
├── OpenULINK
│   └── ulink_firmware.hex
├── README.md
├── bin
│   └── openocd
├── contrib
│   ├── 60-openocd.rules
│   └── libdcc
├── gnu-mcu-eclipse
│   ├── CHANGELOG.txt
│   ├── licenses
│   ├── patches
│   └── scripts
├── scripts
│   ├── bitsbytes.tcl
│   ├── board
│   ├── chip
│   ├── cpld
│   ├── cpu
│   ├── fpga
│   ├── interface
│   ├── mem_helper.tcl
│   ├── memory.tcl
│   ├── mmr_helpers.tcl
│   ├── target
│   ├── test
│   └── tools
└── share
    └── doc

No other files are installed in any system folders or other locations.

Uninstall

The binaries are distributed as portable archives; thus they do not need to run a setup and do not require an uninstall.

Test

A simple test is performed by the script at the end, by launching the executable to check if all shared/dynamic libraries are correctly used.

For a true test you need to first install the package and then run the program from the final location. For example on macOS the output should look like:

$ /Users/ilg/Library/xPacks/\@gnu-mcu-eclipse/openocd/0.10.0-8.1/.content/bin/openocd --version
GNU MCU Eclipse 64-bit Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0+dev-00487-gaf359c18 (2018-05-12-23:16)

More build details

The build process is split into several scripts. The build starts on the host, with build.sh, which runs container-build.sh several times, once for each target, in one of the two docker containers. Both scripts include several other helper scripts. The entire process is quite complex, and an attempt to explain its functionality in a few words would not be realistic. Thus, the authoritative source of details remains the source code.