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Setting up a development environment

Dealing with microcontrollers involves several tools as we'll be dealing with an architecture different from your computer's and we'll have to run and debug programs on a "remote" device.

Documentation

Tooling is not everything though. Without documentation, it is pretty much impossible to work with microcontrollers. The official MB2 technical documentation is at https://tech.microbit.org. We will reference other technical documentation throughout the book.

Tools

We'll use all the tools listed below. Where a minimum version is not specified, any recent version should work but we have listed the version we have tested.

  • Rust 1.79.0 or a newer toolchain.

  • gdb-multiarch. This is a debugging tool. The oldest tested version is 10.2, but other versions will most likely work as well. If your distribution/platform does not have gdb-multiarch available arm-none-eabi-gdb will do the trick as well. Furthermore, some normal gdb binaries are built with multiarch capabilities as well: you can find further information about this in the debugging chapter of this book.

  • cargo-binutils. Version 0.3.6 or newer.

  • probe-rs-tools. Version 0.24.0 or newer.

  • minicom on Linux and macOS. Tested version: 2.7.1. Other versions will most likely work as well though.

  • PuTTY on Windows.

Next, follow OS-agnostic installation instructions for a few of the tools:

rustc & Cargo

Install rustup by following the instructions at https://rustup.rs.

If you already have rustup installed, double check that you are on the stable channel and your stable toolchain is up-to-date. rustc -V should return a date and version no older than the one shown below:

$ rustc -V
rustc 1.79.0 (129f3b996 2024-06-10)

cargo-binutils

$ rustup component add llvm-tools
$ cargo install cargo-binutils --vers '^0.3'
$ cargo size --version
cargo-size 0.3.6

probe-rs-tools

NOTE If you already have old versions of probe-run, probe-rs or cargo-embed installed on your system, remove them before starting this step, as they could conceivably cause problems for you down the line. In particular, probe-run no longer officially exists. Try these as needed:

$ cargo uninstall cargo-embed
$ cargo uninstall probe-run
$ cargo uninstall probe-rs
$ cargo uninstall probe-rs-cli

In order to install probe-rs-tools, go to https://probe.rs and follow the current installation instructions there.

  • NOTE If you prefer to install probe-rs-tools using cargo install, you can try the following steps. Folks have experienced frequent failures with this approach, but you are welcome to give it a go.

    1. Upgrade to the most recent stable Rust.

    2. Install the probe-rs-tools binary prerequisites. (The linked instructions are part of the more general probe-rs embedded debugging toolkit documentation.)

    3. Try the install

      $ cargo install --locked probe-rs-tools

Installing probe-rs-tools will install several useful tools, including probe-rs and cargo-embed (which is normally run as a Cargo command). Check that things are working before proceeding.

$ cargo embed --version
cargo-embed 0.24.0 (git commit: crates.io)

This repository

This book also contains some small Rust codebases used in various chapters: the easiest way to use these is to download the book's source code. You can do this in one of the following ways:

  • Visit the repository, click the green "Code" button and then the "Download Zip" one.

  • Clone it using git (if you know git you presumably already have it installed) from the same repository as linked in the Zip approach.

OS specific instructions

Now follow the instructions specific to the OS you are using: