This repository contains a Vagrantfile and a Puppet manifest for creating an Aleph development environment. (Vagrant is a tool for creating virtual machines, in this case using VirtualBox, and Puppet is a tool for provisioning systems.)
Here are the steps:
- Install VirtualBox (get the appropriate VirtualBox platform package).
- Install Vagrant.
- Get the precise64 Vagrant box, which is an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit system. This is a 323MB file.
vagrant box add precise64 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box
- Get the avr32 toolchain and headers from Atmel. Unfortunately, you have to download these by hand, since Atmel wants your email address. You want "Atmel AVR 32-bit Toolchain 3.4.2 - Linux 64-bit" and "Atmel AVR 8-bit and 32-bit Toolchain (3.4.2) 6.1.3.1475 - Header Files" -- the filenames are avr32-gnu-toolchain-3.4.2.435-linux.any.x86_64.tar.gz and atmel-headers-6.1.3.1475.zip.
- Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/bensteinberg/aleph-development.git
- Copy the two Atmel files into the aleph-development/ directory, something like
cp ~/Downloads/avr32-gnu-toolchain-3.4.2.435-linux.any.x86_64.tar.gz aleph-development/
cp ~/Downloads/atmel-headers-6.1.3.1475.zip aleph-development/
- Change to the aleph-development/ directory, and start the vagrant box:
cd aleph-development/
vagrant up
The first time you run vagrant up, the virtual machine will provision itself with the necessary software and libraries, which can take ten or twenty minutes, depending on your hardware. Subsequent boots will be much faster.
- Now you can ssh into the virtual machine, and start developing (if you get asked for a password, it's 'vagrant'):
vagrant ssh
- When you've logged out, stop the virtual machine like this:
vagrant halt
-
The virtual machine shares a folder with the host machine: the aleph-development/ directory on the host becomes /vagrant/ on the Vagrant box. If you need to move files into or out of the virtual machine, putting files in the shared directory is one way to do it.
-
The provisioning process clones a copy of the tehn/aleph repository into /home/vagrant. You can develop to your heart's content inside this box, but if you want to contribute changes back to tehn/aleph, you'll have to fork the repository, clone it here, edit, push back to your forked copy, then send a pull request. You'll have to create an SSH key in the virtual machine and add it to your github account. Also, on first commit, git will prompt you for name and email address.
-
Although the puppet manifest updates the list of packages available, it does not upgrade installed packages; this requires some interaction and is left as an exercise for the user. Start the virtual machine, log in, update, and upgrade like this:
vagrant up
vagrant ssh
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
The upgrade will install a new kernel, and will ask if it should install the bootloader GRUB on any partitions. Don't let it; leave all partitions unchecked. After the upgrade, you'll see an error message about rebuilding the VirtualBox Guest Additions, reboot and rebuild them like this:
exit
vagrant halt
vagrant up
vagrant ssh
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup
- I've included emacs and vim; obviously, you can install whatever you want with
sudo aptitude update ; sudo aptitude install whizbang, but let me know if there's anything you think should be in the environment by default.
- In order to get this working, the manifest relies on specific versions of the toolchain files. It would be much better for it to handle subsequent versions as well. (However, given a problem with the latest blackfin gcc, maybe it's better to stick with known versions.)
- So far, I have compiled bees, lines, and beekeep. It's possible that other targets require libraries not yet installed in the virtual machine; please let me know if that's the case.
- Although beekeep requires the libjansson4 package, I also had to compile jansson2.5 in order to get the right libraries and header files. I've packaged it and included it in the repo as libjansson.tar.gz -- there may be a better way of including this.