GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain

Arm maintains a GCC cross-compiler available as binaries that run on Linux and Windows. It is available on their arm developer site.

Installation on Windows

Currently there is only a win32 version available for download either as a exe installer or a zip archive. Naming convention gcc-arm-none-eabi-…-win32.exe helps to identify if this is a preview, a major or an update release.

By default each release installs to its own directory instead of upgrading the previous one. This way several releases can coexist and you can select which one you use for a specific project. One downside to this is that the directory and filename convention is heavy. For practical use, you need to configure an IDE or encapsulate those paths and names in Makefile variables.

### Build environment selection

#GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Tools ARM Embedded/9 2019-q4-major"
GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"

BINPFX  = $(GCCDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-
CC      = $(BINPFX)gcc

### Build rules

.PHONY: version

version:
        $(CC) --version

GCCDIR holds the path to the folder where the toolchain is installed. When we install a new release, we need to update this path.
All the commands to build are located in one bin subfolder and they share the same name prefix arm-none-eabi-. So I have created a BINPFX to easily identify the commands.

$ make
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc --version
arm-none-eabi-gcc.exe (GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain 9-2020-q2-update) 9.3.1 20200408 (release)
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Installation on Linux

Installation on Linux means downloading the Linux x86_64 tarball and extracting it. I use the ~/Packages folder for this type of distribution. This means that the Makefile on Linux will be the same as the Windows one except for the value of the GCCDIR variable.

GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2020-q2-update

By selecting the path based on the development environment, there is no need to make changes while switching between OS. Gmake has the built-in variable MAKE_HOST that can be tested for this.

### Build environment selection

ifeq (linux, $(findstring linux, $(MAKE_HOST)))
#GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major
 GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2020-q2-update
else
#GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Tools ARM Embedded/9 2019-q4-major"
 GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"
endif

BINPFX  = $(GCCDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-
CC      = $(BINPFX)gcc

### Build rules

.PHONY: version

version:
        $(CC) --version

Toolchain’s chain of events

In order to generate a file that can be loaded in the micro-controller, we need to sketch the chain of events that will take place.

Compile source codes (.c) to object modules (.o)
Link all the object modules (.o) into an executable (.elf)
Convert the executable (.elf) into a format suitable for loading or flashing (.bin or .hex).

1 Compile

Gmake has default rules to built .o files out of .c files. As we have already defined with CC the command to compile, we can make a simple test of this step by creating an empty .c file and checking what happens when we try to compile it.

$ touch empty.c

$ make empty.o
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc    -c -o empty.o empty.c

2 Link

To link the object module generated in the first step, we need to specify the command to link (ld), the name of a link script and create a rule to call the linker command to generate an executable .elf file from the object module .o file.

There are sample link scripts that come with the toolchain, they are located in the subfolder share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts. For now we can use the simplest script: mem.ld.

### Build environment selection

ifeq (linux, $(findstring linux, $(MAKE_HOST)))
#GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major
 GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2020-q2-update
else
#GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Tools ARM Embedded/9 2019-q4-major"
 GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"
endif

BINPFX  = $(GCCDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-
CC      = $(BINPFX)gcc
LD      = $(BINPFX)ld

LD_SCRIPT = $(GCCDIR)/share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts/mem.ld

### Build rules

%.elf: %.o
        $(LD) -T$(LD_SCRIPT) -o $@ $^

$ make empty.elf
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-ld -T"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts/mem.ld -o empty.elf empty.o

3 Convert

Finally, we use the command objcopy to convert the executable .elf file into binary or intel hex format suitable to load in the micro-controller.

### Build environment selection

ifeq (linux, $(findstring linux, $(MAKE_HOST)))
#GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major
 GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2020-q2-update
else
#GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Tools ARM Embedded/9 2019-q4-major"
 GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"
endif

BINPFX  = $(GCCDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-
CC      = $(BINPFX)gcc
LD      = $(BINPFX)ld
OBJCOPY = $(BINPFX)objcopy

LD_SCRIPT = $(GCCDIR)/share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts/mem.ld

### Build rules

%.elf: %.o
    $(LD) -T$(LD_SCRIPT) -o $@ $(OBJS)

%.bin: %.elf
    $(OBJCOPY) -O binary $< $@

%.hex: %.elf
    $(OBJCOPY) -O ihex $< $@

Now, if we start in a directory that contains only this Makefile and an empty empty.c file, we can successfully build.

$ make empty.bin empty.hex
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc    -c -o empty.o empty.c
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-ld -T"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts/mem.ld -o empty.elf empty.o
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-objcopy -O binary empty.elf empty.bin
"D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"/bin/arm-none-eabi-objcopy -O ihex empty.elf empty.hex
rm empty.o empty.elf

Notice that gmake automatically removes the intermediary .o and .elf files on successful completion.

Cleaning up

I want to keep the output of the build easy to understand without the clutter of the long command names. Also I need a way to clean the working directory back to its initial state.

By prefixing BINPFX with @, commands will not be displayed by gmake when they are executed. Adding an echo of the command target in the rules helps to keep track of the build progression.
A new clean rule will remove all generated files.

### Build environment selection

ifeq (linux, $(findstring linux, $(MAKE_HOST)))
#GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major
 GCCDIR = ~/Packages/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2020-q2-update
else
#GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Tools ARM Embedded/9 2019-q4-major"
 GCCDIR = "D:/Program Files (x86)/GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain/9 2020-q2-update"
endif

BINPFX  = @$(GCCDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-
CC      = $(BINPFX)gcc
LD      = $(BINPFX)ld
OBJCOPY = $(BINPFX)objcopy

LD_SCRIPT = $(GCCDIR)/share/gcc-arm-none-eabi/samples/ldscripts/mem.ld

### Build rules

.PHONY: clean

clean:
    @echo CLEAN
    @rm -f *.o *.elf *.bin *.hex

%.elf: %.o
    @echo $@
    $(LD) -T$(LD_SCRIPT) -o $@ $<

%.bin: %.elf
    @echo $@
    $(OBJCOPY) -O binary $< $@

%.hex: %.elf
    @echo $@
    $(OBJCOPY) -O ihex $< $@

$ make clean
CLEAN

$ make empty.bin empty.hex
empty.elf
empty.bin
empty.hex
rm empty.o empty.elf

Checkpoint

At this stage, I have a working toolchain and I am able to build from an empty source file (empty.c) to an empty binary file (empty.bin).

Next I will select a micro-controller from the STM32 family and generate a binary file that it can execute.