platform-gd32v-mac-unofficial

The platform package for RISCV processors is available in the offical repositories for PlatformIO. Instructions can be found here. Additional documentation and tutorials can be found on the board vendor pages, e.g. Longan Nano or Maixduino The official repository gd32v from sipeed for PlatformIO currently does not support MacOS (toolchain, flash tool, etc.). When trying to install this platform on a Mac you will see an error like:

PackageManager: Installing toolchain-gd32v @ ~9.2.0
Error: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement '~9.2.0' for your system 'darwin_x86_64'

There is a known issue for this here

This project is an unoffical fork of the offical Git Repository https://github.com/sipeed/platform-gd32v. It provides supporrt for MacOS.

Status

This is an inoffical fork and in an experimental, unsupported state. Do not expect stability or production quality. Use this at your own risk. It is intended to be a temporary workaround until official packages are available).

Usage

You can install this platform project from the PlatformIO IDE VSCode or from the command line client. For additional information see the PlatformIO documentation pages. It is not recommended to install this in parallel with official gd32v package (it is possible but there may be conflicts).

Install with PlatformIO CLI (command line)

platformio platform install https://github.com/yesitsme007/platform-gd32v-mac-unofficial.git

Uninstall:

platformio platform uninstall gd32v-mac-unofficial

Install with PlatformIO IDE (VSCode)

Go to PIO Home in VSCode. Select platforms on the left pane. Choose "Advanced installation", enter "https://github.com/yesitsme007/platform-gd32v-mac-unofficial.git" in the text box. Click on "Install" button.

Uninstall: Goto platforms, select Installed, browse and select "GigaDevice GD32V Platform with Toolchain for Mac (unofficial fork) click uninstall button.

Create new project

You can create a new project based on the existing example projects or using the PlatformIO CLI tool.

mkdir myproject
pio init -d myproject -b sipeed-longan-nano --project-option "framework=arduino" --project-option "upload_protocol=dfu"

Creation from the IDE fails with an error but the project files get created and can be imported in VSCode. The generated file platformio.ini has to be edited. The platform needs to be set to gd32v-mac-unofficial. Typically you will use the dfu upload protocol if you upload via USB for the Longan Nano. It should look similar to this example:

[env:sipeed-longan-nano]
platform = gd32v-mac-unofficial
board = sipeed-longan-nano
framework = arduino
upload_protocol = dfu

Useful commands:

pio init -d myproject -b sipeed-longan-nano
pio init -d myproject -b sipeed-longan-nano --project-option "framework=arduino" --project-option "upload_protocol=dfu"
platformio run --target clean
platformio run -e sipeed-longan-nano
platformio run -e sipeed-longan-nano --target upload
platformio debug

License

This is collection of various other open source projects. The licenses of the corresponding projects apply. For additonal parts see LICENSE file

Notes

• It seems that PlatformIO does not support extending existing projects with new additional package repositories. Also this project slightly differs from the original one. Therefore it was created as a fork.
• The version numbers in the contained packes match the ones from the official packages. However they do not necessarily match with the really installed packages.
• The toolchain for compilation is different from the offical repository. It uses the version available from the Sipeed Downlod page. I could not find any link to a repository for the 9.2.0 compiler in the offical package or any documentation how to build it.
• Other projects used:
  • dfu-util https://github.com/riscv-mcu/gd32-dfu-utils (patched version)
  • OpenOCD: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-openocd
  • stm32flash: https://sourceforge.net/projects/stm32flash/
• The package repository uses Github releases with attachments to provide the binary archives. See https://github.com/yesitsme007/platformio-gd32v-mac-unofficial-repo

Known Issues

• Compile project for the first without having option --target upload causes error:

Building .pio/build/sipeed-longan-nano/firmware.hex Adding dfu suffix to firmware.bin sh: dfu-suffix: command not found *** [.pio/build/sipeed-longan-nano/firmware.bin] Error 127

This is an issue in the current master branch of the official project: Workaround:

run: platformio run -e sipeed-longan-nano --target upload

This will install dfu-util utilities, then pio run will also succeed

• New project wizard in VSCode terminates with error:

PIO Core Call Error: "The current working directory /Users/d058463/Documents/PlatformIO/Projects/test4 will be used for the project.\n\nThe next files/directories have been created in /Users/d058463/Documents/PlatformIO/Projects/test4 \n include - Put project header files here\nlib - Put here project specific (private) libraries\nsrc - Put project source files here\nplatformio.ini - Project Configuration File\n\n\nError: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement '~9.2.0' for your system 'darwin_x86_64'"

Workaround: Use command line client to create a new project, e.g.

mkdir myproject
pio init -d <myproject> -b sipeed-longan-nano --project-option "framework=arduino" --project-option "upload_protocol=dfu"