Getting started {#getting-started}

[TOC]

Downloading RIOT code {#downloading-riot-code}

You can obtain the latest RIOT code from our Github repository either by downloading the latest tarball or by cloning the git repository.

In order to clone the RIOT repository, you need the Git revision control system and run the following command:

git clone git://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT.git

Compiling RIOT {#compiling-riot}

Setting up a toolchain {#setting-up-a-toolchain}

Depending on the hardware you want to use, you need to first install a corresponding toolchain. The Wiki on RIOT's Github page contains a lot of information that can help you with your platform:

• ARM-based platforms
• TI MSP430
• Atmel ATmega
• native

The build system {#the-build-system}

RIOT uses GNU make as build system. The simplest way to compile and link an application with RIOT, is to set up a Makefile providing at least the following variables:

• APPLICATION: should contain the (unique) name of your application
• BOARD: specifies the platform the application should be build for by default
• RIOTBASE: specifies the path to your copy of the RIOT repository (note, that you may want to use $(CURDIR) here, to give a relative path)

Additionally it has to include the Makefile.include, located in RIOT's root directory:

# a minimal application Makefile
APPLICATION = mini-makefile
BOARD ?= native
RIOTBASE ?= $(CURDIR)/../RIOT

include $(RIOTBASE)/Makefile.include

You can use Make's ?= operator in order to allow overwriting variables from the command line. For example, you can easily specify the target platform, using the sample Makefile, by invoking make like this:

make BOARD=iotlab-m3

Besides typical targets like clean, all, or doc, RIOT provides the special targets flash and term to invoke the configured flashing and terminal tools for the specified platform. These targets use the variable PORT for the serial communication to the device. Neither this variable nor the targets flash and term are mandatory for the native port.

For the native port, PORT has a special meaning: it is used to identify the tap interface if the netdev_tap module is used. The target debug can be used to invoke a debugger on some platforms. For the native port the additional targets such as all-valgrind and valgrind exist. Refer to cpu/native/README.md for additional information

Some RIOT directories contain special Makefiles like Makefile.base, Makefile.include or Makefile.dep. The first one can be included into other Makefiles to define some standard targets. The files called Makefile.include are used in boards and cpu to append target specific information to variables like INCLUDES, setting the include paths. Makefile.dep serves to define dependencies.

Unless specified otherwise, make will create an elf-file as well as an Intel hex file in the bin folder of your application directory.

Learn more about the build system in the Wiki

Building and executing an example {#building-and-executing-an-example}

RIOT provides a number of examples in the examples/ directory. Every example has a README that documents its usage and its purpose. You can build them by typing

make BOARD=samr21-xpro

or

make all BOARD=samr21-xpro

into your shell.

To flash the application to a board just type

make flash BOARD=samr21-xpro

You can then access the board via the serial interface:

make term BOARD=samr21-xpro

If you are using multiple boards you can use the PORT macro to specify the serial interface:

make term BOARD=samr21-xpro PORT=/dev/ttyACM1

Note that the PORT macro has a slightly different semantic in native. Here it is used to provide the name of the TAP interface you want to use for the virtualized networking capabilities of RIOT.

We use pyterm as the default terminal application. It is shipped with RIOT in the dist/tools/pyterm/ directory. If you choose to use another terminal program you can set TERMPROG (and if need be the TERMFLAGS) macros:

make -C examples/gnrc_networking/ term \
    BOARD=samr21-xpro \
    TERMPROG=gtkterm \
    TERMFLAGS="-s 115200 -p /dev/ttyACM0 -e"