Development

Building this software can be performed two ways: using the STM32CubeIDE or using command line tools.

STM32CubeIDE

The easiest way to start working with the STM32CubeIDE is to create a new project for the STM32F103RCTx. Once this is created, remove the auto-generated source code. Next, drag the contents of the source folder into the project and choose to link to files. You will need to update the build settings for include paths and point to the new .ld linker file.

Command line tools and building a release

In the source folder there is a Makefile that can be used to build the repository using command line tools. When running the make command, specify which model of the device and the language(s) you would like to use.

macOS

Use the following steps to set up a build environment for IronOS on the command line (in Terminal).

  1. Follow steps 1 – 3 here to install the toolchain needed to compile for STM32 microcontrollers.
  2. Install python:
brew install python
  1. (Optional) Update pip so it doesn't warn you about being out-of-date:
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
  1. Change to the source directory:
cd source
  1. Create a Python virtual environment for IronOS named ironos-venv to keep your Python installation clean:
python3 -m venv ironos-venv
  1. Activate the Python virtual environment:
source ironos-venv/bin/activate
  1. Install the dependencies required to run make-translation.py:
pip install bdflib
  1. All done! See some examples below for how you can build your own IronOS.

Examples

To build a single language Simplified Chinese firmware for the TS80P with 8 simultaneous jobs:

make -j8 model=TS80P firmware-ZH_CN

To build a European multi-language firmware for the Pinecil with as many simultaneous jobs as there are logical processors on Linux:

make -j$(nproc) model=Pinecil firmware-multi_European

To build a Cyrillic compressed multi-language firmware for the Pinecil with as many simultaneous jobs as there are logical processors on macOS:

make -j$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu) model=Pinecil firmware-multi_compressed_Belorussian+Bulgarian+Russian+Serbian+Ukrainian

To build a custom multi-language firmware including English and Simplified Chinese for the TS80:

make -j8 model=TS80 custom_multi_langs="EN ZH_CN" firmware-multi_Custom

To build a custom compressed multi-language firmware including German, Spanish, and French for the TS100 (note if model is unspecified, it will default to TS100):

make -j8 custom_multi_langs="DE ES FR" firmware-multi_compressed_Custom

To build a release instead, run the build.sh script. This will update translations and also build every language for all device models. For macOS users, replace make -j$(nproc) in the script with make -j$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu) before running.

Updating languages

To update the language translation files and their associated font maps, execute the make_translation.py code from the Translations directory. If you edit the translation definitions or the English translation, please also run gen_menu_docs.py to update the settings menu documentation automatically.

Building Pinecil V1

I highly recommend using the command line tools and using Docker to run the compiler. It's a bit fussier on setup than the STM tooling, and this is by far the easiest way. If you need an IDE I have used Nuclei's IDE. Follow the same idea as the STM Cube IDE notes above.

Building Pinecil V2

To build the Pinecil V2 firmware, you can use a Docker container that provides a consistent development environment across different operating systems, including Windows with WSL2. Here's how to do it:

Prerequisites

Docker Desktop: Install the latest version of Docker Desktop for your operating system from the official website.

On Windows follow the instructions on the official documentation to install 'Windows Subsystem for Linux' (WSL2).

Building Steps

  1. Clone the repository, initialize and update submodules:

    sh git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS.git

  2. Start the Docker container with the development environment:

    sh cd IronOS ./scripts/deploy.sh

    This script will build a Docker image and run a container with the necessary tools to build the firmware.

  3. Build the firmware for Pinecil V2:

    sh cd source/ ./build.sh -l EN -m Pinecilv2

    This command will compile the firmware with English language support for Pinecil V2 board.

  4. Find the firmware artifacts: After the build completes successfully, you can find the firmware artifacts in the source/Hexfile directory.