EBC Exercise 08a Cross-Compiling

This class is about developing software for embedded Linux. So far we have been doing all of our development on the Beagle. This works well for small (and not so small) programs. However, we are now moving into kernel development and that's best done on a more powerful host computer. In EBC Exercise 08 Installing Development Tools you learned how to download and install the cross-compilers and the source for kernel and u-boot. Now we'll use those tools.

Cross-compiling Hello World
Listing 2-4 on page 29 of the text is an embedded version of Hello World. If you've set up your git repository you will find it in helloWorld.c when you do a git pull. Compile and run it on your host to be sure it works.

host$ gcc helloWorld.c host$ ./a.out Hello, World! Main is executing at 0x400524 This address (0x7fff8260bdf8) is in our stack frame This address (0x601038) is in our bss section This address (0x601020) is in our data section

Now that you know it's working, let's cross compile it. First set the paths to find the cross-compilers. Put the following in a file, call it ~/.oe/crossCompileEnv.sh. Make sure the path is correct for your system. This is for a 32-bit linux.

export ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH=~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc/sysroots/i686-linux/usr/bin/armv7a-angstrom-linux-gnueabi PATH=$PATH:$ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH/.. PATH=$ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH:$PATH export ARCH=arm export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-
 * 1) add cross tools to your path

Here it is for 64-bit

export ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH=~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/armv7a-angstrom-linux-gnueabi PATH=$PATH:$ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH/.. PATH=$ARM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH:$PATH export ARCH=arm export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-
 * 1) add cross tools to your path

Now source the file and compile again. (Note: you only have to source once per terminal session.) host$ source ~/.oe/crossCompileEnv.sh host$ ${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc helloWorld.c host$ file a.out a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, not stripped

The file command tells what's in the file. In this case we have an ARM executable. Success! Now copy to your Beagle and run

host$ scp a.out root@beagle:. host$ ssh root@beagle ./a.out Hello, World! Main is executing at 0x8374 This address (0xbeb32d4c) is in our stack frame This address (0x10650) is in our bss section This address (0x10648) is in our data section

The scp copies a.out to the beagle and the ssh runs the a.out on the beagle. Notice the address are very different from the host version.