Simple Mac Development Environment

I’ve used a number of different posts to set up a simple, lightweight development environment on my late 2009 MacBook.

It uses the Geany editor, PlatformIO and the emulator. I’ve created Build Commands to compile, run the resultant bin on the emulator and upload the bin to the Pokitto.

The only thing that is manual at the moment is the set up of a new project. I’m not doing this very often, but I’ll investigate how this could automated.

If anyone is interested, I could write up how I did this and how I use it.

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make a project called template, then copy it and rename it your poject name?

but in all honesty the platformio setup is prety effortless as its mostly installing the pokitto library and moving/overiding 2 files

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A writeup would be greatly appreciated

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I have a fairly low powered late 2009 MacBook running MacOS High Sierra so I prefer lightweight development environments. My IDE of choice is Geany and I do a custom set up whenever I start developing in a new language or for a new platform.

This post documents the set up on my MacBook and how to get the HelloWorld example to compile, run on the emulator and upload to a Pokitto. It may also be directly applicable for Linux but I have not yet tried it on my other low powered laptop, a Lenovo X200.

Geany

Pokitto Emulator

  • Follow the instructions in this post to install the sdl libraries. Don’t install the macOS build PokkitoEmu.
  • Download the latest Source Code zip from GitHub and unzip (I unzipped into my home directory, $HOME).
  • Open a command line in the new directory created when unzipping and run make.
  • This will create an executable PokittoEmu in the Build sub-directory. In my case, in $HOME/PokittoEmu-0.0.5/Build/PokittoEmu

PlatformIO

  • There are many ways to install PlatformIO core (not PlatormIO IDE). The simplest way to do this on MacOS is using brew.
  • Install the pokittolib for PlatformIO from the command line:
    pio lib -g install Pokitto

New Project

  • create a project directory
  • create a src sub-directory in the project directory
  • copy main.cpp and My_settings.h from $HOME/.platformio/lib/Pokitto_ID5600/examples/HelloWorld to the src sub-directory
  • copy platform.ini and pokitto_pre.py from $HOME/.platformio/lib/Pokitto_ID5600/platformio.ini
  • start Geany and open main.cpp

Geany Build Commands

  • With main.cpp open in Geany, select Build >> Set Build Commands from the menu.

  • In the dialog, change the C++ commands to:
    Label: Compile
    Command: cd %d/../ ; pio run

    Label: Run
    Command: $HOME/PokittoEmu-0.0.5/Build/PokittoEmu %d/../.pioenvs/lpc11u68/firmware.bin

    Label: Upload
    Command: dd bs=1024 if=%d/../.pioenvs/lpc11u68/firmware.bin of=/Volumes/CRP\ DISABLD/firmware.bin

Development in Geany

  • The Build menu can now be used to compile, run (on the emulator) and upload to a Pokitto connected in flash programming mode. Give it a try on the main.cpp open in Geany.
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Well done. Thanks for the writeup.

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What’s that Robin? Batcomputer beeping again? By golly! Another badge! Congrats @aus!

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