2.10. GSoC Getting Started — RTEMS User Manual 5.4-rc2 (21st August 2026) documentation

# 2.10. GSoC Getting Started

The goal of this page is to help new users, especially students get RTEMS compiled and running so they can start with the real work.

Please join the Users Mailing List and Developers Mailing List and ask questions. Help correct any deficiencies in the code or documentation you spot, including those on the wiki. The ultimate goal of GSoC is to help you become part of the open source community.

This section will help you to quickly setup a development environment without delving into the details. For more information you can go through the other subsections under Quick Start chapter or ask on the Developers Mailing List.

You will be best served by using a GNU/Linux environment, which could be in a virtual machine, for example that uses Virtualbox and should run on most modern desktop systems. You should also be able to work with a MacOS or Windows system, but might encounter more difficulty than a *nix environment.

Setting up a development environment consists of the following steps.

1. Installing dependencies for your host operating system.

2. Choosing an installation prefix.

3. Downloading the source code.

4. Installing the tool suite.

5. Building the Board Support Package (BSP).

6. Testing the Board Support Package (BSP).

## 2.10.1. Installing Dependencies

You need tools for your host’s operating system to build the RTEMS tool suite from source. Please have a look at the Host Computer chapter for the instructions to install the tools for your OS.

## 2.10.2. Choosing an installation prefix

The term `prefix` refers to the path on your computer where the software is to be installed. You can refer to the Prefix section for details on choosing an installation prefix.

## 2.10.3. Downloading the Sources

We will be using Git to clone the sources for RTEMS and RSB. This is the preferred way if you are planning to make contributions to the RTEMS project.

Please refer to the Git section for instructions on obtaining sources using Git.

## 2.10.4. Installing the Tool Suite

The Tools suite is the collection of tools required to build the BSP. This includes the compiler, debugger, assembler and other tools. These tools are architecture-specific. We will be installing the SPARC tool suite since we are building a SPARC based BSP.

Please refer to the Install the Tool Suite section for instructions on building and installing the tool suite.

## 2.10.5. Building the Board Support Package

There are two ways of building a BSP. We could either ask RSB to build the BSP or manually build it. In this section will we be building it manually. Please refer the Manual BSP Build section for the instructions.

## 2.10.6. Testing the Board Support Package

Testing is an essential part of RTEMS development process. The main reason for choosing the SPARC erc32 BSP is that, it has very good simulator support. This will allow you to test your changes without the need for SPARC hardware.

Please refer to Test a Board Support Package (BSP) for instructions on testing the BSP.

## 2.10.7. Prove You Can Work On RTEMS

This section is only for students interested in Google Summer of Code.

You have to finish the following task to prove that you can work on RTEMS.

Modify the hello world example to include a new different print statement. Something like “Hello from The Dark Side!”. Then send us enough to prove to us that you did this. We want to know you can work with RTEMS.

Create a patch of your changes and send it to Developers Mailing List along with the screenshot of the output.

If you followed this guide, this hello world modification will likely need to be made in `$HOME/quick-start/src/rtems/testsuites/samples/hello/init.c`. To test your changes, you have to build the BSP again. This could be done by running make in the BSP build directory.

    cd $HOME/quick-start/build/b-erc32
    make

If you are happy with your changes you can commit the changes and send the patch to Developers Mailing List.

## 2.10.8. Creating and Sending Patches

Before sending patches, make sure that the changes you have made conforms to RTEMS coding standards. You can refer to Contributing section for instruction on creating and sending patches.

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while creating the patches.

- Make sure not to commit changes in the master branch. This is to avoid merge conflicts when you are pulling the latest changes from the remote branch.

- Avoid trailing whitespace errors.

- The author name of the patch is your full name.

- The author email of the patch is your valid email address.

- Ensure that your patches build before sending them for review.