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SCons Build Script Generator

lbuild module: modm:build:scons

SCons is a software construction build system written in Python. For a better embedded experience, we've extended it with a custom build tools by the DLR as well as our own modm-specific build tools.

This module generates two files:

  • a modm/SConscript file: configures all required SCons tools with the right settings (also using information from the modm:build module) to compile the modm library.
  • a top-level SConstruct file: configures additional, optional tools and sets up all the relevant SCons functions for your target.

The SConscript file is self contained and does not depend on anything outside of the modm/ directory. This allows it to be combined with SConscript of other projects without clashing.

In fact, if you look at your generated SConstruct file, you'll notice that it doesn't contain a lot of logic or specific data, it is only meant for calling the right SCons tool with the right arguments.

We do not intend to serve every possible use-case with this module. If you need something special, write your own SConstruct file, maybe starting by modifying ours. Remember to set modm:build:scons:include_sconstruct to False, so that your custom SConstruct does not get overwritten. See the instructions inside our generated default SConstruct.

SCons Methods

This module generates these SCons methods depending on the target.

scons

Defaults to scons build.

You can add these arguments to any of the scons commands:

  • verbose=1: gives a more verbose output, so you can, for example, check what options the compiler is called with.
  • profile=release: Compile project with the release profile options (default).
  • profile=debug: Compile project with the debug profile options.

For a description of the release and debug profiles, see the modm:build module documentation.

Debug Profile

When working with the debug profile, make sure to add profile=debug to all commands, especially scons program profile=debug and scons gdb profile=debug!

scons build

Compiles your application into an executable.

Example for a STM32 target:

 $ scons build
Compiling C++·· build/release/main.o
Compiling C···· build/release/modm/ext/tlsf/tlsf.o
    ...
Compiling C++·· build/release/modm/src/modm/ui/display/virtual_graphic_display.o
Compiling C++·· build/release/modm/src/modm/utils/dummy.o
Create Library· build/release/modm/libmodm.a
Indexing······· build/release/modm/libmodm.a
Linking········ build/release/game_of_life.elf

scons size

Displays the static Flash and RAM consumption of your target.

Example for a STM32 target with 16MB external heap:

 $ scons size
Memory usage:.. build/release/game_of_life.elf

Program:  12.8 KiB (0.6% used)
(.data + .fastcode + .fastdata + .hardware_init + .reset + .rodata +
 .table.copy.extern + .table.copy.intern + .table.section_heap +
 .table.zero.intern + .text)

Data:      5.8 KiB (1.5% used) = 2936 B static (0.7%) + 3040 B stack (0.8%)
(.bss + .data + .fastdata + .stack)

Heap:     16.4 MiB
(.heap0 + .heap1 + .heap2 + .heap3 + .heap5 + .heap_extern)

scons program

Writes the executable onto your target via Avrdude or OpenOCD. This is a convenience wrapper around the programming options and methods defined in the modm:build module. (* only AVR and ARM Cortex-M targets)

Example for a STM32 target:

 $ scons program
.----OpenOCD--- build/release/game_of_life.elf
'-------------> stm32f469nih
Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0
    ...
Info : using stlink api v2
Info : Target voltage: 3.259396
Info : stm32f4x.cpu: hardware has 6 breakpoints, 4 watchpoints
    ...
** Programming Started **
auto erase enabled
Info : device id = 0x10006434
Info : flash size = 2048kbytes
Info : Dual Bank 2048 kiB STM32F42x/43x/469/479 found
    ...
wrote 16384 bytes from file build/release/game_of_life.elf in 0.589736s (27.131 KiB/s)
** Programming Finished **
** Verify Started **
verified 13064 bytes in 0.296308s (43.056 KiB/s)
** Verified OK **
shutdown command invoked

scons dfu

Writes the executable onto your target via Device Firmware Update (DFU) over USB. A DFU bootloader is available on many STM32 microcontrollers and can be accessed by pressing the BOOT0-Button during startup. (* only ARM Cortex-M targets)

Example:

$ scons dfu
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building targets ...
dfu_stm32_programmer: program [...]/blink/release/blink.bin
dfu-util 0.9

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2016 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to http://sourceforge.net/p/dfu-util/tickets/

dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 0483:df11
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #0 ...
Determining device status: state = dfuERROR, status = 10
dfuERROR, clearing status
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 2048
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash  "
Memory segment at 0x08000000   4 x 16384 = 65536 (rew)
Memory segment at 0x08010000   1 x 65536 = 65536 (rew)
Memory segment at 0x08020000   1 x 131072 = 131072 (rew)
Downloading to address = 0x08000000, size = 2060
Download        [                         ]   0%            0 bytes   Poll timeout 100 ms
   Poll timeout 0 ms
 Download from image offset 00000000 to memory 08000000-080007ff, size 2048
   Poll timeout 104 ms
   Poll timeout 0 ms
 Download from image offset 00000800 to memory 08000800-0800080b, size 12
   Poll timeout 104 ms
   Poll timeout 0 ms
File downloaded successfully
   Poll timeout 104 ms
   Poll timeout 0 ms
Transitioning to dfuMANIFEST state
scons: done building targets.

scons bmp

Black Magic Probe is convenient tool to convert cheap USB ST-LINK V2 clones to a fully functional GDB compatible debug adaptor for ARM Cortex microcontrollers. GDB can directly communicate with the debug adaptor making debugging easy and accessible. Currently, only uploading code to the target is supported. (* only ARM Cortex-M targets)

Black Magic Probe creates two serial devices, the first being the GDB interface and the second a plain serial adaptor for debugging purposes.

$ ls -l /dev/tty.usb*
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   21, 104 Feb 19 09:46 /dev/tty.usbmodemDEADBEEF
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   21, 106 Feb 19 09:46 /dev/tty.usbmodemDEADBEF1

You can upload your code using a Black Magic Probe with specifying the GDB interface as port parameter.

$ scons bmp port=/dev/cu.usbmodemDEADBEEF verbose=1
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
bmp port iss = /dev/cu.usbmodemDEADBEEF
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building targets ...
arm-none-eabi-gdb -ex "target extended-remote /dev/cu.usbmodemDEADBEEF" \
                  -ex "monitor swdp_scan" -ex "attach 1" -ex "load path/to/project.elf" \
                  -ex "detach" -ex "quit"
[...]
Remote debugging using /dev/cu.usbmodemDEADBEEF
Target voltage: unknown
Available Targets:
No. Att Driver
 1      STM32F1 medium density
Attaching to Remote target
warning: No executable has been specified and target does not support
determining executable automatically.  Try using the "file" command.
0x0800038e in ?? ()
Loading section .vector_rom, size 0xec lma 0x8000000
[...]
Loading section .table.section_heap, size 0xc lma 0x80013f8
Start address 0x8000e6c, load size 5120
Transfer rate: 10 KB/sec, 365 bytes/write.
Detaching from program: , Remote target
[Inferior 1 (Remote target) detached]
scons: done building targets.

scons run

Executes your project on your computer. (* only Hosted targets)

scons gdb

Launches OpenOCD in the background, then launches GDB in foreground with the correct executable. When GDB exits, it stops the OpenOCD process. (* only ARM Cortex-M targets)

This is just a convenience wrapper for the debug functionality defined in the modm:build module.

Choose the correct profile

When debugging, make sure to select the correct compilation profile. The firmware and the executable given to GDB have to be the some or you'll see GDB translate the program counter to the wrong code locations. When you suspect a bug in your firmware, consider that it was most likely compiled with the release profile, since that's the default. First try to scons gdb profile=release, and if that doesn't help, compile and scons program profile=debug and try scons gdb profile=debug again.

scons postmortem

Launches GDB for post-mortem debugging with the firmware identified by the firmware={hash} argument using the data from the coredump={filepath} argument. (* only ARM Cortex-M targets)

See the :platform:fault module for details how to receive the coredump data.

scons itm

Configures OpenOCD in tracing mode to output ITM channel 0 on SWO pin and displays the serial output stream. (* only ARM Cortex-M targets)

See the :platform:itm module for details how to use the ITM as a logging output.

scons symbols

Dumps the symbol table for your executable.

 $ scons symbols
Show symbols for 'build/release/game_of_life.elf':
536871656 00000001 b (anonymous namespace)::nextOperation
536871657 00000001 b (anonymous namespace)::checkNextOperation
536871658 00000001 b (anonymous namespace)::error
536871444 00000001 b read_touch()::initialized
    ...
134228236 00000668 T I2C1_EV_IRQHandler
134224924 00001136 T otm8009a_init(unsigned char)
134221192 00001378 t _GLOBAL__sub_I_p
536871782 00002054 b (anonymous namespace)::txBuffer

scons listing

Decompiles your executable into an annotated assembly listing. This is very useful for checking and learning how the compiler translates C++ into assembly instructions:

 $ scons listing
Ext. Listing··· build/release/game_of_life.lss
 $ less build/release/game_of_life.lss
    ...
Disassembly of section .text:
    ...
08000d74 <main>:
main():
./main.cpp:315

int
main()
{
 8000d74:   b508        push    {r3, lr}
    Board::initialize();
 8000d76:   f7ff fcc9   bl  800070c <_ZN5Board10initializeEv>
    Board::initializeDisplay();
 8000d7a:   f000 fd91   bl  80018a0 <_ZN5Board17initializeDisplayEv>
    Board::initializeTouchscreen();
 8000d7e:   f7ff fc55   bl  800062c <_ZN5Board21initializeTouchscreenEv>
    game_of_life();
 8000d82:   f7ff feff   bl  8000b84 <_Z12game_of_lifev>
    ...

scons bin

Creates a binary file of your executable.

 $ scons bin
Binary File···· build/release/game_of_life.bin

scons artifact

Caches the ELF and binary file of the newest compiled executable identified by the hash of the binary file in {build_path}/artifacts/{hash}.elf.

 $ scons artifact
Cache Artifact· build/release/game_of_life.elf

scons -c

Cleans the build artifacts.

 $ scons -c
Removed build/release/main.o
Removed build/release/modm/ext/tlsf/tlsf.o

Removed build/release/modm/src/modm/ui/display/virtual_graphic_display.o
Removed build/release/modm/src/modm/utils/dummy.o
Removed build/release/modm/libmodm.a
Removed build/release/game_of_life.elf
Removed build/release/game_of_life.lss

scons qtcreator

Generates several files so that the project can be imported into Qt Creator via the .creator file importer. Note, that no compiliation or debugging features are supported, this is only meant for using the IDE as an editor.

Consider this an unstable feature

XPCC Generator Tool

The modm:communication:xpcc:generator module contains the Python tools to translate the XPCC XML declarations into various language implementations. This module contains a SCons wrapper tool, that understands the XML dependencies and automatically updates the generated files when it becomes necessary.

The wrapper tool is automatically used when the generator module is detected, and its options are evaluated for the wrapper as follows:

env.XpccCommunication(
    xmlfile=options["::xpcc:generator:source"],
    container=options["::xpcc:generator:container"],
    path=options["::xpcc:generator:path"],
    namespace=options["::xpcc:generator:namespace"]
)

The generated files are available as a top-level #include <identifiers.hpp>.

Information Tool

Our info SCons tool generates a set of header files containing information about the repository state.

A call to env.InfoGit(with_status={True, False}) will generate a <info_git.h> header file and add these two defines to the command line CPP options:

  • MODM_GIT_INFO
  • MODM_GIT_STATUS: defined only if called with with_state=True.

You can enable this by setting the modm:build:scons:info.git option.

A call to env.InfoBuild() will generate a <info_build.h> header file and add this define to the command line CPP options:

  • MODM_BUILD_INFO

You can enable this by setting the modm:build:scons:info.build option.

Respect developers privacy

This information is placed into the firmware in cleartext, so it will be trivial to extract from a memory dump. Consider this information public as soon as it is uploaded to your target. Make sure you only use the information you absolutely need!

Git Information

These are the values defined as const char * strings in <info_git.h>:

  • MODM_GIT_SHA: commit hash: %H.
  • MODM_GIT_SHA_ABBR: short commit hash: %h.
  • MODM_GIT_SUBJECT: commit subject as text: %s.
  • MODM_GIT_AUTHOR: author name: %an.
  • MODM_GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL: author email: %ae.
  • MODM_GIT_AUTHOR_DATE: authoring date: %ad.
  • MODM_GIT_AUTHOR_DATE_TIMESTAMP: authoring date as Unix timestamp: %at.
  • MODM_GIT_COMMITTER: committer name: %cn.
  • MODM_GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL: committer email: %ce.
  • MODM_GIT_COMMITTER_DATE: committer date: %cd.
  • MODM_GIT_COMMITTER_DATE_TIMESTAMP: committer das as Unix timestamp: %ct.
  • MODM_GIT_CONFIG_USER_NAME: local user name: user.name.
  • MODM_GIT_CONFIG_USER_EMAIL: local user email: user.email.

If called with_status=True, this information is added as well:

  • MODM_GIT_MODIFIED: number of modified files: M.
  • MODM_GIT_ADDED: number of added files: A.
  • MODM_GIT_DELETED: number of deleted files: D.
  • MODM_GIT_RENAMED: number of renamed files: R.
  • MODM_GIT_COPIED: number of copied files: C.
  • MODM_GIT_UPDATED_NOT_MERGED: number of updated, but not merged files: U.
  • MODM_GIT_UNTRACKED: number of untracked files: ?.

This is the output of the example/linux/git project showing an unclean repository state with uncommitted changes. This can give you a few hints as to where a firmware came from and help you pinpoint the source of a bug or feature.

Info:    Local Git User:
Info:    Name:  Name Surname
Info:    Email: name.surname@provider.com
Info:    Last Commit:
Info:    SHA:             1b5a9a642857182161a615039c92907e59881614
Info:    Abbreviated SHA: 1b5a9a642
Info:    Subject:         wip
Info:
Info:    Author:
Info:    Name:      Name Surname
Info:    Email:     name.surname@provider.com
Info:    Date:      Tue Jul 17 22:23:20 2018 +0200
Info:    Timestamp: 1531859000
Info:
Info:    Committer:
Info:    Name:      Name Surname
Info:    Email:     name.surname@provider.com
Info:    Date:      Tue Jul 17 22:23:20 2018 +0200
Info:    Timestamp: 1531859000
Info:
Info:    File Status:
Info:    Modified:  10
Info:    Added:     0
Info:    Deleted:   0
Info:    Renamed:   0
Info:    Copied:    0
Info:    Untracked: 6

Build Information

These are the values defined as const char * strings in <info_build.h>:

  • MODM_BUILD_PROJECT_NAME: as defined in the modm:build:project.name option.
  • MODM_BUILD_MACHINE: machine information.
  • MODM_BUILD_USER: user information.
  • MODM_BUILD_OS: OS version string (best effort, may not be useful!).
  • MODM_BUILD_COMPILER: compiler information.

The output of the examples/linux/build_info running on macOS:

Info:    Project:  build_info
Info:    Machine:  name.local
Info:    User:     user
Info:    Os:       Mac 10.12.6 (x86_64)
Info:    Compiler: g++-8 (Homebrew GCC 8.1.0) 8.1.0

Bitmap Tool

If the modm:build:scons:image.source is defined as a path, it'll be searched for .pbm files to convert into C++ data files using the bitmap tool:

source, header = env.Bitmap(bpm_file)

See the GraphicsDisplay::drawImage() method in the modm:ui:display module for how to use these generated files. The directory is added to the include search paths, so the generated files can be accessed as #include <image.hpp>.

Options

cache_dir

Path to SConstruct CacheDir

If value is $cache, the cache is placed into the top-level build/ folder. You can disable CacheDir by setting an empty string.

Default: []
Inputs: [Path]

image.source

Path to directory containing .pbm files

Default: []
Inputs: [Path]

include_sconstruct

Generate a SConstruct file

This overwrites any top-level SConstruct file!

Default: True
Inputs: [True, False]

info.build

Generate build state information

Default: False
Inputs: [True, False]

info.git

Generate git repository state information

  • Info: generates information about the last commit.
  • Info+Status: like Info plus git file status.

Default: Disabled
Inputs: [Disabled, Info, Info+Status]

unittest.runner

Path to unittests runner template

See modm/test/runners/*.cpp.in

Default: []
Inputs: [Path]

unittest.source

Path to directory containing unittests

When this path is declared, the generated SConstruct will compile only the unittests, not your application source code! You should use separate project configurations for compiling your unittest and application!

Default: []
Inputs: [Path]

Collectors

flag_format

Formatting compile flags for SCons

Inputs: [Callable]

path.tools

SCons tool paths to be added to the Environment

Inputs: [Path]

tools

SCons tools to be added to the Environment

Inputs: [String]