Build configuration for the pico (and other arms)

[cve2022]

Hello there. I was configuring a virtual machine to build micropython and I had some issues. I have already had the same issues when configuring two Linux installations and I solved them with some help of the Internet. I am posting this in the hope of it to be helpful to others.

I am using Ubuntu Mate 22.04 LTS in VirtualBox VM. I assume the sequence below will work with other Ubuntu versions and perhaps Debian. YMMV.

TL;DR

The directions for stm32 in the Getting Started page fail. The name of the packages of the arm gcc cross compiler changed at some point. Also cmake needed to be installed (I made the "minimum" install - between quotes because it already install a ton of things).

$ sudo apt install binutils-arm-none-eabi gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-dev libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-dev libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-newlib
$ sudo apt install cmake

After that, Micropython for the Pico is successfully built.

Longer version

I followed the directions for stm32 in the Getting Started page. Some packages such as build-essential were already installed, so I just added git (and git-gui and gitk for that matter) and successfully compiled mpy-cross.

But trying to install the arm gcc cross compiler resulted in

$ sudo apt-get install arm-none-eabi-gcc arm-none-eabi-binutils arm-none-eabi-newlib
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package arm-none-eabi-gcc
E: Unable to locate package arm-none-eabi-binutils
E: Unable to locate package arm-none-eabi-newlib

There are some pages in the Internet that point to a ppa repository, but I got some warnings or errors after trying this path. It turns out Ubuntu 22.04 already has equivalent packages with different names.

$ sudo apt install binutils-arm-none-eabi gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libnewlib-dev libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-dev libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-newlib
Suggested packages:
  libnewlib-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  binutils-arm-none-eabi gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-dev
  libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-dev libstdc++-arm-none-eabi-newlib
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 43 not upgraded.
Need to get 442 MB of archives.
After this operation, 2.575 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Finally, when trying to compile MP for the Pico, cmake was not found, so...

$ sudo apt install cmake

After that, the build was successful, taking less than one minute

$ cd ports/rp2
$ make submodules
$ make

and the final result:

>>> os.uname()
(sysname='rp2', nodename='rp2', release='1.19.1', version='v1.19.1-915-g2bcd88d55 on 2023-03-03 (GNU 10.3.1 MinSizeRel)', machine='Raspberry Pi Pico with RP2040')

[cve2022]

I would like to suggest adding the instructions to the README.md of the rp2 port (though it might be useful to other ports... or not):

diff --git a/ports/rp2/README.md b/ports/rp2/README.md
index 078919ce8..7fe9bb2df 100644
--- a/ports/rp2/README.md
+++ b/ports/rp2/README.md
@@ -14,6 +14,19 @@ Currently supported features are:
 
 See the `examples/rp2/` directory for some example code.
 
+## Build environment setup
+Install the dependencies:
+
+    $ sudo apt-get install build-essential libffi-dev git pkg-config cmake
+
+Install the cross compiler:
+
+    $ sudo apt-get install arm-none-eabi-gcc arm-none-eabi-binutils arm-none-eabi-newlib
+
+If an error indicating the packages were not found, try the following instead:
+
+    $ sudo apt install binutils-arm-none-eabi gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi
+
 ## Building
 
 The MicroPython cross-compiler must be built first, which will be used to

Anyway, I will close this thread.