Clone and edit the NodeMCU firmware locally on your platform. This image will take it from there and turn your code into a binary which you then can flash to the ESP8266 or the ESP32. It can also create LFS images from your Lua sources.
There seem to be three types of NodeMCU developers:
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NodeMCU "application developers"
They just need a ready-made firmware. I created a cloud build service with a nice UI and configuration options for them. However, if they use LFS they might want to build their LFS images as an alternative to Terry Ellison's online service. Then this image is right for them!
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Occasional NodeMCU firmware hackers
They don't need full control over the complete tool chain and don't want to setup a Linux VM with the build environment. This image is exactly for them!
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NodeMCU firmware developers
They commit or contribute to the project on GitHub and need their own full fledged build environment with the complete tool chain. They still might find this Docker image useful.
If you have previously pulled this Docker image then you should update the image from time to time to pull in the latest bug fixes:
docker pull marcelstoer/nodemcu-build
Follow the instructions at https://docs.docker.com/get-started/.
Docker runs on a VirtualBox VM which by default only shares the user directory from the underlying guest OS. On Windows that is c:/Users/<user> and on Mac it's /Users/<user>. Hence, you need to clone the NodeMCU firmware repository to your user directory. If you want to place it outside the user directory you need to adjust the VirtualBox VM sharing settings accordingly.
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware.git
For ESP32 you would then switch to the dev-esp32 branch and update the submodules:
git checkout dev-esp32
git submodule update --recursive
Note The build script adds information about the options you set below to the NodeMCU boot message (dumped to console on application start).
To configure the modules to be built into the firmware edit app/include/user_modules.h.
Also consider turning on SSL or LFS in app/include/user_config.h. #define LUA_NUMBER_INTEGRAL in the same file gives you control over whether to build a firmware with floating point support or without. See the NodeMCU documentation on build options for other options and details.
The version information and build date are correctly set automatically unless you modify the parameters in app/include/user_version.h.
Start Docker and change to the NodeMCU firmware directory (in the Docker console). To build the firmware run:
docker run --rm -ti -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build build
Depending on the performance of your system it takes 1-3min until the compilation finishes. The first time you run this it takes longer because Docker needs to download the image and create a container.
The firmware binary (integer or float) is created in the bin subfolder of your NodeMCU root directory. You will also find a mapfile in the bin folder with the same name as the firmware file but with a .map ending.
There are several tools to flash the firmware to the ESP8266.
Start Docker and change to the NodeMCU firmware directory (in the Docker console). To create the LFS image run:
docker run --rm -ti -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware -v {PathToLuaSourceFolder}:/opt/lua marcelstoer/nodemcu-build lfs-image
This will compile and store all Lua files in the given folder including subfolders.
To only add specific files you can prepare a file containing the files to add and give them as paramater.
docker run --rm -ti -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware -v {PathToLuaSourceFolder}:/opt/lua marcelstoer/nodemcu-build lfs-image final/files.lst
Assume the following content of files.lst:
lib/*.lua main.lua
../baseProject/*.lua
NOTE: use linux path separator '/' instead of Windows type ''.
Basically this is just an ls expression as long as it contains no spaces and other shell escapable characters.
Assume the following files inside {PathToLuaSourceFolder} which is mounted as /opt/lua
baseProject/base.lua
baseProject/lib/baseLib.lua
final/files.lst
final/lib/lib1.lua
final/main.lua
main.lua
this would add the following files
baseProject/base.lua
final/lib/lib1.lua
final/main.lua
Depending on what type(s) of firmware you built this will create one or two LFS images in the root of your Lua folder.
NodeMCU for ESP32 is built on the ESP-IDF (Espressif IoT Development Framework). It uses a menu-driven user interface Kconfig to configure all firmware features and options. Hence, building NodeMCU for ESP32 is a two step process and you will launch the Docker container twice. First to start Kconfig, select all options and write the configuration file. Then to actually build the firmware.
Note make sure you have got the Git submodules loaded as described above.
docker run --rm -ti -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build configure-esp32
This internally will run make menuconfig in the firmware directory. It will generate a sdkconfig file in the same.
docker run --rm -ti -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build build
That is the exact same command as for building for the ESP8266. It analyses the available files to figure out whether you checked out NodeMCU for ESP32 or ESP8266. The build command is thus a shortcut to using build-esp32.
The process will fail early with a meaningful error message if it does not find a sdkconfig file in the firmware directory.
You can pass the following optional parameters to the Docker build like so docker run -e "<parameter>=value" -e ....
IMAGE_NAMEThe default firmware file names arenodemcu_float|integer_<branch>_<timestamp>.bin(no integer/float for ESP32). If you define an image name it replaces the<branch>_<timestamp>suffix and the full image names becomenodemcu_float|integer_<image_name>.bin.TZBy default the Docker container will run in UTC timezone. Hence, the time in the timestamp of the default image name (seeIMAGE_NAMEoption above) will not be same as your host system time - unless that is UTC as well of course. To fix this you can set theTZparameter to any valid timezone name e.g.-e TZ=Asia/Kolkata.
INTEGER_ONLY and FLOAT_ONLY are not supported anymore. Please configure LUA_NUMBER_INTEGRAL in app/include/user_config.h as described above.
(Docker on) Windows handles paths slightly differently. You need to specify the full path to the NodeMCU firmware directory in the command:
docker run --rm -it -v c:/Users/<user>/<nodemcu-firmware>:/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build build
If the Windows path contains spaces it would have to be wrapped in quotes as usual on Windows.
docker run --rm -it -v "c:/Users/monster tune/<nodemcu-firmware>":/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build build
If this Docker container hangs on sharing the drive (or starting) check whether the Windows service 'LanmanServer' is running. See DockerBug #2196 for details.
Docker for Mac is slow. Period. However, much of the I/O-related latency can be significantly reduced with tuned volume mounts. Docker for Mac 17.04 introduced a "delegated" flag to avoid keeping host file system and container file system in perfect sync all the time. "delegated" postpones writing back changes in the container to the host in order to achieve higher filesystem throughput.
So, instead of -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware you would say -v `pwd`:/opt/nodemcu-firmware:delegated (note the flag at the end).
Ask a question on StackOverflow and assign the nodemcu and docker tags.
For bugs and improvement suggestions create an issue at https://github.com/marcelstoer/docker-nodemcu-build/issues.
Thanks to Paul Sokolovsky who created and maintains esp-open-sdk.
A big "Thank You!" goes to Gregor Hartmann who implemented LFS-support and removed the ill-designed INTEGER_ONLY / FLOAT_ONLY parameters for this image.