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Getting Started
This guide covers a step-by-step process on setting up version control, obtaining and building a copy of the source code for a port, building the documentation, running tests, and a description of the directory structure of the MicroPython code base.
Source control with git
MicroPython is hosted on GitHub and uses Git for source control. The workflow is such that code is pulled and pushed to and from the main repository. Install the respective version of Git for your operating system to follow through the rest of the steps.
Note
For a reference on the installation instructions, please refer to the Git installation instructions. Learn about the basic git commands in this Git Handbook or any other sources on the internet.
Get the code
It is recommended that you maintain a fork of the MicroPython repository for your development purposes. The process of obtaining the source code includes the following:
- Fork the repository https://github.com/micropython/micropython
- You will now have a fork at <https://github.com/<your-user-name>/micropython>.
- Clone the forked repository using the following command:
$ git clone https://github.com/<your-user-name>/micropython
Then, configure the remote repositories to be able to collaborate on the MicroPython project.
Configure remote upstream:
$ cd micropython
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/micropython/micropython
It is common to configure upstream
and
origin
on a forked repository to assist with sharing code
changes. You can maintain your own mapping but it is recommended that
origin
maps to your fork and upstream
to the
main MicroPython repository.
After the above configuration, your setup should be similar to this:
$ git remote -v
origin https://github.com/<your-user-name>/micropython (fetch)
origin https://github.com/<your-user-name>/micropython (push)
upstream https://github.com/micropython/micropython (fetch)
upstream https://github.com/micropython/micropython (push)
You should now have a copy of the source code. By default, you are pointing to the master branch. To prepare for further development, it is recommended to work on a development branch.
$ git checkout -b dev-branch
You can give it any name. You will have to compile MicroPython whenever you change to a different branch.
Compile and build the code
When compiling MicroPython, you compile a specific port
, usually targeting a
specific board <glossary>
. Start by installing the
required dependencies. Then build the MicroPython cross-compiler before
you can successfully compile and build. This applies specifically when
using Linux to compile. The Windows instructions are provided in a later
section.
Required dependencies
Install the required dependencies for Linux:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libffi-dev git pkg-config
For the stm32 port, the ARM cross-compiler is required:
$ sudo apt-get install arm-none-eabi-gcc arm-none-eabi-binutils arm-none-eabi-newlib
See the ARM GCC toolchain for the latest details.
Python is also required. Python 2 is supported for now, but we recommend using Python 3. Check that you have Python available on your system:
$ python3
Python 3.5.0 (default, Jul 17 2020, 14:04:10)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
All supported ports have different dependency requirements, see their respective readme files.
Building the MicroPython cross-compiler
Almost all ports require building mpy-cross
first to
perform pre-compilation of Python code that will be included in the port
firmware:
$ cd mpy-cross
$ make
Note
Note that, mpy-cross
must be built for the host
architecture and not the target architecture.
If it built successfully, you should see a message similar to this:
LINK mpy-cross
text data bss dec hex filename
279328 776 880 280984 44998 mpy-cross
Note
Use make -C mpy-cross
to build the cross-compiler in one
statement without moving to the mpy-cross
directory
otherwise, you will need to do cd ..
for the next
steps.
Building the Unix port of MicroPython
The Unix port is a version of MicroPython that runs on Linux, macOS, and other Unix-like operating systems. It's extremely useful for developing MicroPython as it avoids having to deploy your code to a device to test it. In many ways, it works a lot like CPython's python binary.
To build for the Unix port, make sure all Linux related dependencies
are installed as detailed in the required dependencies section. See the
required_dependencies
to make sure that all dependencies are installed for this port. Also,
make sure you have a working environment for gcc
and
GNU make
. Ubuntu 20.04 has been used for the example below
but other unixes ought to work with little modification:
$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2) 9.3.0
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.then build:
$ cd ports/unix
$ make submodules
$ make
If MicroPython built correctly, you should see the following:
LINK micropython
text data bss dec hex filename
412033 5680 2496 420209 66971 micropython
Now run it:
$ ./micropython
MicroPython v1.13-38-gc67012d-dirty on 2020-09-13; linux version
Use Ctrl-D to exit, Ctrl-E for paste mode
>>> print("hello world")
hello world
>>>
Building the Windows port
The Windows port includes a Visual Studio project file micropython.vcxproj that you can use to build micropython.exe. It can be opened in Visual Studio or built from the command line using msbuild. Alternatively, it can be built using mingw, either in Windows with Cygwin, or on Linux. See windows port documentation for more information.
Building the STM32 port
Like the Unix port, you need to install some required dependencies as
detailed in the required_dependencies
section, then build:
$ cd ports/stm32
$ make submodules
$ make
Please refer to the stm32 documentation for more details on flashing the firmware.
Note
See the required_dependencies
to make sure that all
dependencies are installed for this port. The cross-compiler is needed.
arm-none-eabi-gcc
should also be in the $PATH or specified
manually via CROSS_COMPILE, either by setting the environment variable
or in the make
command line arguments.
You can also specify which board to use:
$ cd ports/stm32
$ make submodules
$ make BOARD=<board>
See ports/stm32/boards for the available boards. e.g. "PYBV11" or "NUCLEO_WB55".
Building the documentation
MicroPython documentation is created using Sphinx
. If
you have already installed Python, then install Sphinx
using pip
. It is recommended that you use a virtual
environment:
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
$ pip install sphinx
Navigate to the docs
directory:
$ cd docs
Build the docs:
$ make html
Open docs/build/html/index.html
in your browser to view
the docs locally. Refer to the documentation on importing
your documentation to use Read the Docs.
Running the tests
To run all tests in the test suite on the Unix port use:
$ cd ports/unix
$ make test
To run a selection of tests on a board/device connected over USB use:
$ cd tests
$ ./run-tests.py --target minimal --device /dev/ttyACM0
See also writingtests
.
Folder structure
There are a couple of directories to take note of in terms of where certain implementation details are. The following is a break down of the top-level folders in the source code.
py
Contains the compiler, runtime, and core library implementation.
mpy-cross
Has the MicroPython cross-compiler which pre-compiles the Python scripts to bytecode.
ports
Code for all the versions of MicroPython for the supported ports.
lib
Low-level C libraries used by any port which are mostly 3rd-party libraries.
drivers
Has drivers for specific hardware and intended to work across multiple ports.
extmod
Contains a C implementation of more non-core modules.
docs
Has the standard documentation found at https://docs.micropython.org/.
tests
An implementation of the test suite.
tools
Contains helper tools including the
upip
and thepyboard.py
module.
examples
Example code for building MicroPython as a library as well as native modules.