ESP8266 Open SDK

Breif

esp8266 open source SDK
Official github page: https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk

Install in Debian/Linux/Lubuntu

Folder instrucion, cd into /opt/ first

make app folder, for example nodemcu, git clone from github, should be /opt/nodemcu-firmware
git clone the esp-open-sdk folder, should be /opt/esp-open-sdk

Install all tools

sudo apt-get install make unrar-free autoconf automake libtool gcc g++ gperf \
flex bison texinfo gawk ncurses-dev libexpat-dev python-dev python python-serial \
sed git unzip bash help2man wget bzip2

Install esp-open-sdk

Clone

cd /opt
git clone --recursive https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk.git

Compile esp-open-sdk, to build the self-contained, standalone toolchain+SDK:

make STANDALONE=y
make

This took 1-2 hours, and if sucessfully installed you will see

Xtensa toolchain is built, to use it:

export PATH=/opt/nodemcu/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:$PATH

Espressif ESP8266 SDK is installed, its libraries and headers are merged with the toolchain

Use toolchain

First always run export line

export PATH=/opt/nodemcu/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:$PATH

Try test with source code blinky example here
Compile nodemcu code

cd /opt/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware
make

Brand new firmware bin file can be found in "bin" folder

Trouble shoot

Error: configure: error: could not find GNU libtool >= 1.5.26

Need to install this: sudo apt-get install libtool-bin

You must NOT be root to run crosstool-NG

add a none root user

user add esp
chown -R esp:esp /opt/nodemcu/
chmod u+rwx /opt/nodemcu/

Using with Vigrant

Install it via vagrant, get the vagrant git package:

git clone https://github.com/adafruit/esp8266-micropython-vagrant.git
cd esp8266-micropython-vagrant

provision vagrant box: vagrant up and vagrant ssh

Compile SDK

cd ~/esp-open-sdk
make STANDALONE=y

This will take 30-90 mins' to finish, actual time depends on your machine, not very necessary to do the following step, edit the Vagrantfile

# Bump the memory allocated to the VM up to 1 gigabyte as the compilation of
# the esp-open-sdk tools requires more memory to complete.
v.memory = 1024

and the compiling will be finished like this, SDK is installed now.

...
Xtensa toolchain is built, to use it:
 
export PATH=/home/vagrant/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:$PATH
 
Espressif ESP8266 SDK is installed, its libraries and headers are merged with the toolchain

Setup the Path of Bin of SDK

Run this command to update the .profile file that runs whenever you log into the virtual machine:

echo "PATH=$(pwd)/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.profile

Logout and login again to process the update:

exit
vagrant ssh

and check the path is correct or not

echo $PATH

the result should be

/home/vagrant/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games

You can also check the .profile directly by following command

vi ~/.profile

and the result should be like:

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