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 is10.2, but other versions will most likely work as well. If your distribution/platform does not havegdb-multiarch
availablearm-none-eabi-gdb
will do the trick as well. Furthermore, some normalgdb
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 0.3.3
$ 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
, first install its
prerequisites (note: these instructions are
part of the more general probe-rs
embedded debugging toolkit). Then install
probe-rs-tools
with Cargo.
$ cargo install --locked probe-rs-tools
NOTE This may fail due to frequent changes in probe-rs
. If so, go to https://probe.rs and
follow the current installation instructions there.
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 knowgit
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: