compile examples without vscode

[haakoni]

Building the Picocomputer Examples Without VSCode

I'm not familiar with VSCode and prefer not to use it due to Microsoft's privacy statement and license terms (see my disclaimer at the bottom), and I'm much more familiar with vim / cli, so I did a quick bit of research into how to build the examples without it. Since I couldn't find anything in the documentation or wiki, I'm posting the steps here in case it's useful to others, and feel free to add this to the wiki/documentation. The other repos in the project is built similar (msbasic, ehbasic)

1. Build and install the picocomputer cc65 fork

The project uses a custom fork of cc65, so you need to build that first:

git clone https://github.com/picocomputer/cc65.git
cd cc65
make
sudo PREFIX=/usr/local make avail

This installs cl65, ld65, ar65 and the other tools into /usr/local/bin.

2. Build the examples with CMake

With the tools on your PATH, CMake can find everything it needs automatically — VSCode is just a wrapper around these same commands:

git clone https://github.com/picocomputer/examples
cd examples 
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=tools/rp6502.cmake
cmake --build build

To build a single example:

cmake --build build --target hello

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Disclaimer: this is purely a personal preference — I'm not criticising the project's choice regarding VSCode at all, I just want this to be more easily available. The Picocomputer looks like a really cool project! My PCB and parts are on their way and I'm looking forward to digging in.

[rumbledethumps]

I intend to always keep things working without VS Code. As you found out, cmake and python3 are the only real requirements.

Are you still finding references to pyserial in the org repos? That isn't needed anymore. Also intend to keep rp6502.py pip-free.

[haakoni]

Thank you!, I'm beginning to understand the build system better now, and yes the pyserial was some old text I saw somewhere, I updated my post so that it will not cause confusion for others.

regarding CMakeFIles, normally I'm used to create a build directory, cd into it and do a "cmake ..", so what I was missing was the toolchain file in tools/rp6502.cmake.

I think your scaffolding could be more solid if you set this at the top of the root CMakeFiles.txt (before project():

set(CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/tools/rp6502.cmake"
    CACHE FILEPATH "Toolchain file")

Then, the command line procedure to build the project/examples etc is just

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make