5.1. Releases

RTEMS releases provide a stable version of the kernel for the supported architectures. RTEMS maintaines the current and previous releases. Support for older releases is provided using the RTEMS support channels.

Please read Host Computer before continuing. The following procedure assumes you have installed and configured your host operating. It also assumes you have installed any dependent packages needed when building the tools and the kernel.

You need to select a location to build and install the RTEMS Tool chain and RTEMS. Make sure there is plenty of disk space and a fast disk is recommended. Our procedure will document building and installing the tools in a base directory called /opt/rtems. This path will require root access. If you are working on a machine you do not have root access to you can use a home directory, If building on Windows use /c/opt/rtems to keep the top level paths as short as possible. Windows Path Length provides more detail about path lengths on Windows.

The location used to install the tools and kernel is called the prefix. Choose an Installation Prefix explains prefixes and how to use them. It is best to have a prefix for each different version of RTEMS you are using. If you are using RTEMS in production it is not a good idea to install a development version of over the top by using the same prefix. A separate prefix for each version avoids this.

Released versions of the RTEMS Source Builder (RSB) download all source code for all packages from the FTP File Server rather than from the package’s home site. Hosting all the source on the FTP File Server ensures the source is present for the life of the release on the FTP File Server. If there is a problem accessing the RTEMS FTP the RSB will fall back to the packages home site.

The FTP File Server is hosted at the Oregon State University’s The Open Source Lab (http://osuosl.org/). This is a nonprofit organization working for the advancement of open source technologies and RTEMS is very fortunate to be shosted here. It has excellent internet access and performance.

Note

Controlling the RTEMS Kernel Build

Building RSB releases by default does not build the RTEMS kernel. To build the RTEMS kernel add the --with-rtems option to the RSB command line.

By default all the BSPs for an architecture are built. If you only wish to have a specific BSP built you can specify the BSP list by providing to the RSB the option --with-rtemsbsp. For example to build two BSPs for the SPARC architecture you can supply --with-rtemsbsp="erc32 leon3". This can speed the build time up for some architectures that have a lot of BSPs.

Once you have built the tools and kernel you can move to the Packages section of the manual.

5.1.1. RTEMS Tools and Kernel

This procedure will build a SPARC tool chain. Set up a suitable workspace to build the release in. On Unix:

$ cd
$ mkdir -p development/rtems/releases
$ cd development/rtems/releases

If building on Windows:

$ cd /c
$ mkdir -p opt/rtems
$ cd opt/rtems

Note the paths on Windows will be different to those shown.

Download the RTEMS Source Builder (RSB) from the RTEMS FTP server:

$ wget https://ftp.rtems.org/pub/rtems/releases/6/6.bb7dded-modified/rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz
--2016-03-21 10:50:04-- https://ftp.rtems.org/pub/rtems/releases/@rtems-ver-major/6.bb7dded-modified/rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz
Resolving ftp.rtems.org (ftp.rtems.org)... 140.211.10.151
Connecting to ftp.rtems.org (ftp.rtems.org)|140.211.10.151|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 967056 (944K) [application/x-xz]
Saving to: 'rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz'

rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified 100%[====================================>] 944.39K 206KB/s   in 5.5s

2016-03-21 10:50:11 (173 KB/s) - 'rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz' saved [967056/967056]

On Unix unpack the RSB release tar file using:

$ tar Jxf rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz
$ cd rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified/rtems/

On Windows you need to shorten the path (See Windows Path Length) after you have unpacked the tar file:

$ tar Jxf rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified.tar.xz
$ mv rtems-source-builder-6.bb7dded-modified 6.bb7dded-modified
$ cd 6.bb7dded-modified

Build a tool chain for the SPARC architecure. We are using the SPARC architecture in our example because GDB has a good simulator that lets us run and test the samples RTEMS builds by default

If building on Windows add --jobs=none to avoid GNU make issues on Windows discussed in Parallel Builds with Make.

$ ../source-builder/sb-set-builder \
    --prefix=/opt/rtems/6 6/rtems-sparc

You can now build a third-party library or an application as defaulted in TBD.