Simulator project for LVGL embedded GUI Library

The LVGL is written mainly for microcontrollers and embedded systems however you can run the library on your PC as well without any embedded hardware. The code written on PC can be simply copied when your are using an embedded system.

Using a PC simulator instead of an embedded hardware has several advantages:

• Costs $0 because you you don't have to buy or design PCB
• Fast because you don't have to design and manufacture PCB
• Collaborative because any number of developers can work in the same environment
• Developer friendly because much easier and faster to debug on PC

Requirements

This project is configured for VSCode and tested on Linux and macOS (see below). It requires a working version of GCC (or AppleClang), GDB and make in your path.

To allow debugging inside VSCode you will also require a GDB extension or other suitable debugger.

• SDL a low level driver library to use graphics, handle mouse, keyboard etc.

Usage

Get the PC project

Clone the PC project and the related sub modules:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/lvgl/lv_sim_vscode_sdl

Install SDL

You can download SDL from https://www.libsdl.org/

On on Linux you can install it via terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libsdl2-dev

On macOS you can install it using Homebrew via the terminal:

brew install sdl2

Setup

To allow custom UI code an lv_conf.h file placed at ui/simulator/inc will automatically override this projects lv_conf.h file. By default code under ui is ignored so you can reuse this repository for multiple projects. You will need to place a call from main.c to your UI's entry function.

To build and debug, press F5. You should now have your UI displayed in a new window and can access all the debug features of VSCode through GDB.

To allow temporary modification between simulator and device code, a SIMULATOR=1 define is added globally.

CMake

The project can be built using CMake, either within VS Code or from the command line.

VS Code CMake

Install one of the many CMake extensions, e.g. twxs.cmake. This will detect the CMakeLists.txt file and configure the project accordingly.

The executable can be invoked using:

./build/lvgl-sdl 

Command Line Interface (CLI)

Use the build script build.sh to easily build (and rebuild the project)

./build.sh --help
Usage: build.sh [-v | --verbose] [ reset | clean | debug | release ]

• reset removes the build directory and reconfugures the project from first principles. It is always best to start with a reset build

Run the executable at:

./build/debug/lvgl-sdl 

macOS

This project has been tested with Monterey, AppleClang v13.0.0, SDL2 2.0.18

$ gcc -v
Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple clang version 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.3)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin21.1.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

To check for the path of SDL2 using homebrew, e.g.

brew ls SDL2
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/bin/sdl2-config
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/include/SDL2/ (77 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/lib/libSDL2-2.0.0.dylib
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/lib/cmake/ (2 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/lib/pkgconfig/sdl2.pc
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/lib/ (4 other files)
/usr/local/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.18/share/aclocal/sdl2.m4

If not installed, then install using brew:

brew install sdl2