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Ndless SDK: C and assembly development introduction

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Adrien Bertrand edited this page Jan 17, 2023 · 20 revisions

This is a backup of the original hackspire wiki page, now on https://hackspire.org/index.php/C_and_assembly_development_introduction

This tutorial describes how to set up an environment and use the Ndless SDK to write native Ndless-compatible programs for the TI-Nspire.

Table of Contents

Install dependencies

On Linux distros

  • Make sure your system has the following dependencies: binutils, boost-program-options, GCC (with C++ support), git, GMP, MPC, MPFR, python3, texinfo, wget, and zlib. Install them with your system's package manager if not.
For example, on Debian 11: 
sudo apt install binutils g++ gcc git libboost-program-options-dev libgmp-dev libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev libtool-bin python3-dev texinfo wget zlib1g-dev

On Mac OS X

  • Make sure you have Xcode Command Line Utilities installed: xcode-select --install
  • Make sure your system has the following dependencies: binutils, boost-program-options, GCC (with C++ support), git, GMP, MPC, MPFR, python3, wget, and zlib. Install them with your system's package manager if not.
For example, with brew: 
brew install binutils boost gcc git gmp libmpc mpfr python wget zlib

On Windows

MinGW and MSYS do not work correctly, so use WSL or install Cygwin (32bit, x86). WSL is closer to a real Linux environment and likely easier to set up.

Cygwin

  • Install the following dependencies: php (5.6+), libboost-devel, libboost_program_options*, binutils, gcc-core, gcc-g++, git, mpfr, mpfr-devel, gmp, libgmp-devel, libmpc3, libmpc-devel, make, zlib-devel, wget

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

  • You can also use the Windows Subsystem for Linux. In this case, follow the instructions in the Linux section.

Build and install toolchain and SDK

  • Get the latest code from GitHub
 git clone --recursive https://github.com/ndless-nspire/Ndless.git && cd Ndless
  • On Windows, fix the few symlinks, for instance zehn.h in the ndless-sdk/tools/genzehn folder, which has to be deleted then copied there from ndless-sdk/include (and if you intend to rebuild Ndless, utils.c from the resources folder into the different installers folders)
  • Run the SDK's build_toolchain.sh script that will download and build a complete ARM toolchain compatible with Ndless, and install it (edit the PREFIX variable at the beginning of the script to change the install location). You don't need to be root for this.
 cd ndless-sdk/toolchain/
 ./build_toolchain.sh

Running the script again will continue from the last successful step (not redownloading everything for instance). At the end of a successful build you should see Done!. Alternatively you can verify the build using echo $?. 0 indicates success.

  • Now add the following folders to your PATH environment variable. The toolchain build script will remind you to do this.
On Linux, if you use bash, ~/.bash_profile should be a good place for this (for zsh, it would be ~/.zshrc), just add something like this to it: 
 export PATH="[path_to_ndless]/ndless-sdk/toolchain/install/bin:[path_to_ndless]/ndless-sdk/bin:${PATH}"

...or if you use fish-shell, add this following line to ~/.config/fish/config.fish: 

set -gx PATH [ndless_path]/ndless-sdk/toolchain/install/bin $PATH
set -gx PATH [ndless_path]/ndless-sdk/bin $PATH
You can find out the [path_to_ndless] by executing pwd in the Ndless directory
  • Build Ndless and the SDK, in the top level of the repository, run:
 make

Verifying the installation

  • Open a console, and run:
 nspire-gcc

If everything has been set up correctly you should see something similar to: 

 arm-none-eabi-gcc: fatal error: no input files
 compilation terminated.

2-minute tutorial

As a convention for the next chapters, lines starting with $ are commands you should type in a console. Other lines are the command's output.

Your first build

Ndless comes with sample programs in the samples/ directory of the Ndless SDK. We will try to build the C Hello World. Change the current directory of the console: 

 cd "<my_ndless_sdk_copy>/ndless-sdk/samples/helloworld-sdl"

Ndless programs are built with GNU Make, which is run with the command make. So let's make the program: 

 make
 nspire-gcc -Wall -W -marm -Os -c hello-sdl.c
 mkdir -p .
 nspire-ld hello-sdl.o -o ./helloworld-sdl.elf 
 genzehn --input ./helloworld-sdl.elf --output ./helloworld-sdl.tns --name "helloworld-sdl"
 make-prg ./helloworld-sdl.tns ./helloworld-sdl.prg.tns

nspire-gcc is Ndless's wrapper for the GNU C Compiler GCC, which compiles C and assembly source files to object files (here hello.o).

nspire-ld is the wrapper for GCC, which redirects gcc with the option "-fuse-ld=gold" to use another wrapper "arm-none-eabi-ld.gold" as linker. "arm-none-eabi-ld.gold" adds some necessary libraries to the final program.

genzehn converts the executable created by "nspire-ld" to a format, which ndless supports.

make-prg adds a simple loader on top so the executable works on older versions of ndless.

Your first program

If you want to create a program from scratch:

  • Create a new directory for the program
  • Type in a console:
 cd "<your directory path>"
 nspire-tools new <name>
where <name> is your program name. This will create a Makefile to build <program>.tns
  • Create a new .c file and edit your program
  • Run make to build it
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