ch32v00x SDK

This is the snap for the ch32v00x SDK, “All the tools to build an embedded app on wch chipsets”. It works on Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and other major Linux distributions.

Published for with 💝 by Snapcrafters

(Don't have snapd installed?)

Install

sudo snap install ch32v00x

The snap requires the following permissions (interfaces):

• home to access the source to be compiled and copy the output there;
• network-bind to bind a socket for GDB (openocd only);
• hardware-observe and raw-usb to access the WCHLink hardware (openocd only).

Once installed, all the compilation works out-of-the-box. To use openocd, however, the snap need to be granted access to hardware-observe and raw-usb as those interfaces are not connected by default. It can be achieved by running:

snap connect ch32v00x:hardware-observe
snap connect ch32v00x:raw-usb

Moreover, to allow access to the WCHLink hardware without superuser permissions, it is necessary to setup udev rules.

This can be achieved through the convenience script ch32v00x.setup-udev like:

ch32v00x.setup-udev | sudo sh -

Please, review the output of ch32v00x.setup-udev before runnnig it through a priviledged shell.

As a last note, snap apparently doesn't support names containing a + character (!?) so c++, c++filt and g++ have been renamed respectively cplusplus, cplusplusfilt and gplusplus.

WCH library

This snap includes a library (libwch) and a link script to remove the complexity of rebuilding every time the library.

The library has been reworked both to improve few obscure points and to make it possible to package all the functionality. It also comes with all the requried syscall implementations, so that it is not necessary anymore to link against libgloss or libnosys. There are plans to port some of those changes to newlib to remove some overhead.

Some headers changed name (misc.h -> nvic.h and debug.h -> sysclk.h) to a little bit more semantic one. Moreover, all headers can be found in the ch32v00x folder, to avoid possible name clashes.

LTO support

libwch is built with LTO support. This allows to shrink the size of a binary, simply adding the -flto flag to the compilation/linking commands. It should be noted that this is independent from the usual -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections/--gc-sections.

Examples

This snaps includes a command to explore the examples found in the original SDK: ch32v00x.example.

ch32v00x.example has mainly two modes:

• source output (ch32v00x.example <example-name>) which just outputs the source code;
• compilation (ch32v00x.example -c <example-name> [-o <output-name>]) which will compile the example.

ch32v00x.example includes a comp script to easily list/complete the different example names.

All examples are reworked to comply with the changes made to the original WCH library (mainly for packagin purposes).

Convenience specs

The compilation suggested by WCH (and distributed with MRS) is rather complex, requires a rather big Makefile and forces recompilation of the SDK on every build.

While it is possible to do that with this snap as well, the latter contains a pre-built SDK and a spec file that takes care of all those details.

It is enough for most purposes to run

ch32v00x.gcc my-source.c --specs=ch32v00x.specs -o my-binary.elf

to obtain the same result as the Makefile.

Remaining tasks

Snapcrafters (join us) are working to land snap install documentation and the snapcraft.yaml upstream so [Project] can authoritatively publish future releases.

• Click the green "Use this template" button above to create a new repository based on this template
• Give the newly created repository a sensible name, like godzilla if you're snapping the Godzilla software (Note: Do not use snap in this name.)
• Update the description of the repository to Unofficial snap for [Project]
• Update logos and references to [Project] and [my-snap-name]
• Create a snap that runs in devmode
• Convert the snap to strict confinement, or classic confinement if it qualifies
• Register the snap in the store, using the preferred upstream name
• Add a screenshot to this README.md
• Add install instructions to this README.md
• Update snap store metadata, icons and screenshots
• Publish the confined snap in the Snap store beta channel
• Update the install instructions in this README.md
• Post a call for testing in the Snapcraft Forum "Snapcrafters" category - link
• Add the Snapcraft store account (snap-advocacy@canonical.com) as a collaborator to your snap in the Dashboard and ask a Snapcrafters admin to accept this request
• Fix all important issues found during testing
• Make a post in the Snapcraft Forum "store-requests" category asking for a transfer of the snap name from you to Snapcrafters - link
• Ask a Snapcrafters admin to fork your repo into github.com/snapcrafters, and configure the repo for automatic publishing into edge on commit
• Add the provided Snapcraft build badge to this README.md
• Publish the snap in the Snap store stable channel
• Update the install instructions in this README.md
• Post an announcement in the Snapcraft Forum "Snapcrafters" category - link
• Ask the Snap Advocacy team to celebrate the snap - link
• Submit a pull request or patch upstream that adds snap install documentation - link
• Ask upstream if they are interested in maintaining the Snap. If they are:
  • Fork the upstream project, add the snap build files and required assets/launchers to that repo and submit a pull request or patch - link
  • Add upstream contact information to the README.md
  • If upstream accept the PR:
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    • Contact the Snap Advocacy team to request the snap be transferred to upstream

If you have any questions, post in the Snapcraft forum.