Start the RIOT ‐ Getting started with RIOT

Requirements
Get the source code
Setup the toolchain
Setup a flashing tool
Hello World!
Write your first applicatoin

Requirements

Git (http://git-scm.com/)
Python (for the terminal script) (http://www.python.org/)
A toolchain (see Setup the toolchain)

TODO: Collect the requirements.

Get the source code

You can obtain RIOT either by cloning the git repositories or download the latest tarballs.

Using the git repository

In order to obtain RIOT from the official GitHub repositories, please perform the following commands:

The kernel

git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT.git

The platform configurations

git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/boards.git

git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/thirdparty_boards.git
git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/thirdparty_cpu.git

Optional (recommended): Examplary projects

git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/projects.git

Download the tarballs

TODO: Build tarballs!

Setup the toolchain

You can either build RIOT for one of the supported hardware platforms (check our website) or try the native port. As a special platform, you will find a CPU and board called native in the repository. This target allows you to run RIOT as a process on Linux on most supported hardware platforms. Just set CPU and BOARD to native in your project's Makefile, call make, and execute the resulting elf-file.

For ARM

Download and install GNU Tools for ARM Embedded Processors according to the information provided on the website.

TODO: Check if this is working with all supported ARM architectures

For MSP430

Download and install GCC toolchain for MSP430 according to the information provided on the website.

For the native port

In order to build RIOT for the native port, you just need the GNU Compiler Collection.

Setup a flashing tool

For MSB-A2

Enter the boards directory and change to msba2-common/tools.
Call make.
Either run make install (you will need probably superuser rights to do this, i.e. you could run sudo make install) or add boards/msba2-common/tools/bin/ to your PATH variable.
Install the driver for the FTDI chip from FTDI homepage.

For MSB-430H

TODO

For redbee-econotag

TODO

For STM32F4DISCOVERY

TODO

Optional: Hello World!

If you have obtained a copy of the projects repository, you can build the famous Hello World application for RIOT.

Enter the projects directory and change to hello-world.
Edit the Makefile to set the variables RIOTBASE and RIOTBOARD according to where your copies of the RIOT repositories are located.
Dependent on your target platform set the BOARD environment variable and call make, e.g. BOARD=msb-430h make.
Now you program the resulting hex file on your target platform by calling make flash.
Finally see the output of the application by running make term.

Write your first application

To write your own RIOT application, you just need a Makefile and C file(s) containing your source code. A template Makefile is available in the dist folder of the RIOT repository.

One of the C files has to provide a main function according to this prototype:

void main(void);

Within your project's Makefile, you can define the modules you want to use.

Unless specified otherwise, make will create an elf-file as well as an Intel hex file in the bin folder of your project directory.