Getting started

Table of Contents

• Downloading RIOT code
• Compiling RIOT
  • Setting up a toolchain
  • The build system
  • Building and executing an example
  • Configuring an application
• Use Docker to build RIOT
  • Setup
    • Installing docker
• Usage
  • Troubleshooting
• Using the native port with networking
  • Setting up a tap network

Downloading RIOT code

You can obtain the latest RIOT code from our Github repository either by downloading the latest tarball or by cloning the git repository.

In order to clone the RIOT repository, you need the Git revision control system and run the following command:

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

Compiling RIOT

Setting up a toolchain

Depending on the hardware you want to use, you need to first install a corresponding toolchain. The Wiki on RIOT's Github page contains a lot of information that can help you with your platform:

• ARM-based platforms
• TI MSP430
• Atmel ATmega
• native

The build system

RIOT uses GNU make as build system. The simplest way to compile and link an application with RIOT, is to set up a Makefile providing at least the following variables:

• APPLICATION: should contain the (unique) name of your application
• BOARD: specifies the platform the application should be built for by default
• RIOTBASE: specifies the path to your copy of the RIOT repository (note, that you may want to use here, to give a relative path)

Additionally it has to include the Makefile.include, located in RIOT's root directory:

# a minimal application Makefile
APPLICATION = mini-makefile
BOARD ?= native
RIOTBASE ?= $(CURDIR)/../RIOT
 
include $(RIOTBASE)/Makefile.include

You can use Make's ?= operator in order to allow overwriting variables from the command line. For example, you can easily specify the target platform, using the sample Makefile, by invoking make like this:

make BOARD=iotlab-m3

Besides typical targets like clean, all, or doc, RIOT provides the special targets flash and term to invoke the configured flashing and terminal tools for the specified platform. These targets use the variable PORT for the serial communication to the device. Neither this variable nor the targets flash and term are mandatory for the native port.

For the native port, PORT has a special meaning: it is used to identify the tap interface if the netdev_tap module is used. The target debug can be used to invoke a debugger on some platforms. For the native port the additional targets such as all-valgrind and valgrind exist. Refer to cpu/native/README.md for additional information

Some RIOT directories contain special Makefiles like Makefile.base, Makefile.include or Makefile.dep. The first one can be included into other Makefiles to define some standard targets. The files called Makefile.include are used in boards and cpu to append target specific information to variables like INCLUDES, setting the include paths. Makefile.dep serves to define dependencies.

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

Learn more about the build system in the Wiki

Building and executing an example

RIOT provides a number of examples in the examples/ directory. Every example has a README that documents its usage and its purpose. You can build them by typing

make BOARD=samr21-xpro

or

make all BOARD=samr21-xpro

into your shell.

To flash the application to a board just type

make flash BOARD=samr21-xpro

You can then access the board via the serial interface:

make term BOARD=samr21-xpro

If you are using multiple boards you can use the PORT macro to specify the serial interface:

make term BOARD=samr21-xpro PORT=/dev/ttyACM1

Note that the PORT macro has a slightly different semantic in native. Here it is used to provide the name of the TAP interface you want to use for the virtualized networking capabilities of RIOT.

We use pyterm as the default terminal application. It is shipped with RIOT in the dist/tools/pyterm/ directory. If you choose to use another terminal program you can set TERMPROG (and if need be the TERMFLAGS) macros:

make -C examples/gnrc_networking/ term \
    BOARD=samr21-xpro \
    TERMPROG=gtkterm \
    TERMFLAGS="-s 115200 -p /dev/ttyACM0 -e"

Configuring an application

Many modules in RIOT offer configuration options that will be considered during compile-time.They are modeled as macros that can be overridden by the user. Currently there are two ways of doing this: using CFLAGS or via Kconfig (the last one is currently only possible for a subset of modules).

For instructions on how to configure via CFLAGS check the identified compile-time configurations. To learn how to use Kconfig in RIOT, please refer to the User's guide to configure with Kconfig.

Use Docker to build RIOT

Docker is a platform that allows packaging software into containers that can easily be run on any Linux that has Docker installed.

You can download a RIOT Docker container from the Docker Hub and then use that to build your project making use of all toolchains that we've preinstalled in the container.

Setup

Installing docker

To use the RIOT docker build image, the Docker application needs to be installed on your system. To install Docker, depending on your operating system, use sudo apt-get install docker or a variant.

The user on your computer requires permission to access and use docker. There are two ways to manage this:

• Your OS distribution may create a group called docker. If so, then adding yourself to that group (and logging out and in again) should grant you permission.
• Execute docker with sudo. This is in fact the most secure and recommended setup (see here, here, here and here). No extra setup steps are needed. make should be instructed to use sudo by setting DOCKER="sudo docker" in the command line.

Finally, download the pre-built RIOT Docker container:

# docker pull riot/riotbuild

This will take a while. If it finishes correctly, you can then use the toolchains contained in the Docker container: (from the riot root):

$ docker run --rm -i -t -u $UID -v $(pwd):/data/riotbuild riot/riotbuild ./dist/tools/compile_test/compile_test.py

Usage

The RIOT build system provides support for using the Docker container to build RIOT projects, so you do not need to type the long docker command line every time:

(from the directory you would normally run make, e.g. examples/default)

$ make BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1

If your user does not have permissions to access the Docker daemon:

$ make BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 DOCKER="sudo docker"

to always use Docker for building, set BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 (and if necessary DOCKER="sudo docker") in the environment:

$ export BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1

running make without specifying BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 will still use Docker (because of the environment variable)

Troubleshooting

On some Ubuntu versions a make with BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 can't resolve the host name of for example github.com. To fix this add the file /etc/docker/daemon.json with the address of your DNS Server.

Using the native port with networking

If you compile RIOT for the native cpu and include the netdev_tap module, you can specify a network interface like this: PORT=tap0 make term

Setting up a tap network

There is a shell script in RIOT/dist/tools/tapsetup called tapsetup which you can use to create a network of tap interfaces.

USAGE

To create a bridge and two (or count at your option) tap interfaces:

sudo ./dist/tools/tapsetup/tapsetup [-c [<count>]]