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Building Custom Firmware but is RVDS obsolete?


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#1 Jason.Net

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Posted 05 October 2013 - 10:57 AM

It seems that RVDS has been replaced with the Development Studio. However there is a free community edition.

 

Is RVDS still the preffered way to build custom firmware for these devices?

Anyone have any experience in either?

 

Thanks

Jason



#2 Cuno

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Posted 06 October 2013 - 05:03 PM

Is RVDS still the preffered way to build custom firmware for these devices?

No, for microcontroller projects, MDK-ARM is the preferred toolchain. It uses the same compiler as RVDS/DS, btw.

 

http://www.arm.com/p...k-arm/index.php

 

Note that there is a less expensive version for Cortex-M microcontrollers (MDK-Cortex-M), such as the STM32 used in the newer Netduinos.

 

Cuno



#3 Jason.Net

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Posted 07 October 2013 - 03:30 PM

No, for microcontroller projects, MDK-ARM is the preferred toolchain. It uses the same compiler as RVDS/DS, btw.

 

http://www.arm.com/p...k-arm/index.php

 

Note that there is a less expensive version for Cortex-M microcontrollers (MDK-Cortex-M), such as the STM32 used in the newer Netduinos.

 

Cuno

 

Thanks for the pointers Cuno.

 

Do you have any links for building the Netduino firmware using this compiler. I have no experience at all of it but have some experience with software development.

 

Cheers

Jason



#4 Cuno

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Posted 08 October 2013 - 09:55 AM

Do you have any links for building the Netduino firmware using this compiler.

No, unfortunately not. I have never built the Netduino firmware myself.

 

Cuno



#5 Jason.Net

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Posted 08 October 2013 - 03:39 PM

No, unfortunately not. I have never built the Netduino firmware myself.

 

Cuno

 

Hi Cuno

Thanks for getting back to me. Does anyone else have any pointers please?

cheers



#6 CW2

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Posted 10 October 2013 - 11:30 AM

What toolchain (exact version) do you use and what firmware do you want to build? Keil MDK is supported directly (setup is described in .NET MF Porting Kit documentation), but there have been certain changes in recent versions (~4.60) that require updates of executable and library paths in .targets file. Secret Labs uses ARM RVDS to compile Netduino firmware, so it is also needed to copy RVDS scatterfile for MDK and maybe some other minor changes - there are several articles on the forum (search for "Keil" or similar)...



#7 Chris Walker

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Posted 10 October 2013 - 04:20 PM

We do use RVDS to compile the Netduino firmware. Going forward, we're going to be transitioning to MDK-ARM. Both of these tools actually use the same compiler. They use different formats of "scatter files" and there are a few other small differences. Chris

#8 Jason.Net

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Posted 12 October 2013 - 06:24 AM

Thanks CW2. I want to build the netduino 2 and 2 plus firmware. I am using the beta 4.3 firmware and VS 2012 for development but could really use the ability to change the firmware mainly for performance reasons.

 

One 'small' issue is that I don't have the source for beta 4.3 so have been looking at going back to 4.2. This in turn means going back to using VS2010 which is no longer installed but I have all versions available. Is it ever simple?

 

I would be looking at the Keil MDK package but would want to get something going with a trial version before committing myself. Hi Chris. Anything you can share to give me a start? Cheers



#9 Chris Walker

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Posted 12 October 2013 - 04:21 PM

Hi Jason.Net, We don't have scatter files for MDK-ARM today, but we will have them in the future (as we transition to MDK-ARM as the recommended toolset). Our Netduino engineering resources are deeply focused on another Netduino project at the moment, but once we move to MDK-ARM we'll share all the scatter files' source as usual. Chris

#10 CW2

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Posted 12 October 2013 - 07:00 PM

AFAIK copying scatterfile_tinyclr_rvds.xml to scatterfile_tinyclr_mdk.xml works fine. In MDK 4.60 they changed executable directory from armbin40 to armbin, so it must be fixed in toolsTargetsMicrosoft.Spot.system.mdk.targets. Also, there was change in one of the library paths, which must be fixed there too, unfortunately I don't remember exactly what was that.

 

Even though MDK and RVDS use the same compiler, it behaves a little bit differently in each 'mode' and there are slightly different C runtime libraries, so the output size differs too - but this is not usually a problem for Netduino gen 2 firmware, as they have more memory than gen 1 (where it is sometimes needed to adjust the flash memory layout to accommodate bigger code generated by MDK).



#11 Jason.Net

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Posted 12 October 2013 - 09:13 PM

Thank you for the head start CW2 I will have a look at getting it working with the 4.2 source. Hope to see the source for 4.3 soon. Cheers guys




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