setup-windows

Getting Started on Windows

Note

The documentation is quite verbose: The process is documented down to every click. Because of this verbosity the setup may appear complex and long, but in fact is rather straight forward. A novice user should be able to complete all steps in less than 30 minutes.

Note

Do not be afraid to ask for help e.g. in our forum

Install Ubuntu LTS

1. Open the Windows Store
2. Type "Ubuntu LTS" in the search bar
3. Click on the most recent version (highest number) of Ubuntu LTS found. As of February 2024, this is version Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS.

1. Click on the button labeled "Get"

It will take a while for Ubuntu LTS to be installed.

Eventually, the installation completes.

1. Click on the button labeled "Open"

Warning

If the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has not yet been enabled, an error such as below will show. Not to worry, the next section got you covered.

Enabling WSL

Note

If an Ubuntu terminal opened just fine, proceed directly to the next section. This section will show how to enable WSL for those who hit the error.

1. Search for "powershell" in the search field of the task bar
2. Right-click on the hit "Windows PowerShell"
3. Click "Run as administrator"

1. Click "Yes" to confirm running the PowerShell as administrator

• Type wsl --install and confirm with the return-key.
• After a while, the following message should appear:

• Now reboot Windows to complete the installation

The reboot will take longer than usual due to the installation of WSL. You may see a screen like above for some time. Once the reboot is completed, an Ubuntu terminal should open automatically.

Setup Ubuntu LTS

You should now see an Ubuntu terminal such as:

If no Ubuntu terminal has opened, click here to see how to open it

1. Click on the Start / Windows button in the task bar
2. Click on the "Ubuntu" entry

• Enter a user name of your choice, memorize it, and confirm with the return-key
• Enter a password of your choice, memorize it, and confirm with the return-key
• Repeat the password and confirm with the return-key

Warning

When typing passwords in the Ubuntu terminal, the chars entered will not appear on the screen and neither will appear *. You will have to type "blindly". This is an intentional security feature.

Note

If you fail to repeat the password correctly, the setup will just again. So no need to worry.

• Once you successfully have entered user name and password, you should see something like this:

• now type (without quotation signs) "sudo apt update" and confirm with the return-key
• you will be asked for you password. Enter it and confirm with the return key

Warning

When typing the password, you will no get any visible feedback such as the typed password or * chars. This is an intentional security feature.

• Once you successfully entered the password, something like this will show up:

Note

The command sudo apt update only updates the list of available software packages in Ubuntu. Updating the installed software requires to additionally run sudo apt upgrade

• Now type sudo apt upgrade and confirm with the return-key

Note

This time you likely will not need to confirm with your password again. The sudo command that allows you to run administrative commands such as apt update will skip the password entry, when heuristics indicate that you have not left your machine since you last confirmed a command with your password.

• This command will list which packages are about to be updated. Confirm with with the return-key
• Eventually after all software packages in Ubuntu have been updated, you will see something like this:

Note

It is recommended to regularly update the installed software in Ubuntu using sudo apt update followed by sudo apt upgrade

Installation of the required software packages in Ubuntu

• Now, install the required software by typing the following and confirming it with a return-key

sudo apt install make gcc-multilib python3-serial wget unzip git openocd gdb-multiarch esptool podman-docker clangd clang

• This will show something like this:

• Confirm the installation by hitting the return-key
• The installation process will take some time
• Eventually the output will look like below (except for the exit)

• Type exit and confirm with the return-key to close the Ubuntu terminal
• The window should close

Installing VS Code

1. Click on the Windows Store icon to open the Windows store
2. Type vs code in the search bar
3. Click on the "Visual Studio Code by Microsoft Corporation" search result (not shown in the screenshot above)
4. In the Windows Store page of VS Code (as shown in the screenshot above), click on the button labeled "Install"

• Downloading and installing VS Code by the Store App may take some time
• Eventually, it should show something like this:

• Now, launch VS Code via the start menu
• On the first launch, VS code will look similar to this:

• You can select a theme of you liking
• You might want to dial back the data collection by Microsoft by clicking on "opt out"

1. Open the extension marketplace by clicking on the extensions icon in the left menu bar
2. Search for wsl in the search field
3. Click on the "Install" button for the "WSL" extension by "Microsoft"

Note

The installation of the WSL extension will complete the next time you open Ubuntu terminal. If the Ubuntu terminal was still open, close it using the exit comment and launch it again.

Cloning the RIOT Repository and First Steps in the Terminal

Note

Even if you subsequently work only via VS Code, do NOT skip this step. You will still need a "clone" of the RIOT Repository to work with.

• Open the Ubuntu terminal.
• (It may show some output regarding the VS Code WSL extension being installed. Just wait for this to complete.)
• Type git clone https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT and confirm with the return-key
• This may take some time. Eventually, it will print done. when it completed
• Type cd RIOT/examples/hello-world and confirm with the return-key to enter the folder hello-world example app in the RIOT repo
• Type make and confirm with the return key to build the app for the board native

Note

The native board is a virtual board that will run an RIOT application as regular Linux process. This can be useful for testing or during development. The app should behave the same when run on real hardware.

• Now run the application by executing make term
• The output should look similar to the screenshot above
• You can close the terminal by:
  1. Press and hold the Ctrl-key
  2. With the Ctrl-key still held, press the C-key
  3. Release both keys

Using VS Code for Development

• If not already open, open the Ubuntu terminal
• Confirm that the terminal is pointed to the folder ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world
  • The blue part left of the prompt (the $ sign in the terminal) shows the current working directory for the terminal
  • If the blue string is not ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world, type cd ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world to enter that path
• Inside ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world run the command make compile-commands
• The output should look like above

• Navigate back to ~/RIOT using the command cd ~/RIOT
• run code . to launch VS Code
  • This will take a bit longer on the first launch
• Eventually, a VS Code Window should pop up that looks like this:

1. Click on "Yes, I trust the authors"

• Now, use the tree view in the left and open the examples folder
• Open the hello-world folder inside the examples folder
• Open the main.c file in the hello-world folder within examples
• The file should open and look like this:

1. Click on the "Install" button when prompted to install the C/C++ Extension.

Note

You can also install that extension via the extension marketplace just like the WSL extension was installed, if that pop up does not show up.

Warning

Do NOT configure RIOT as CMake project. VS Code will incorrectly detect RIOT as CMake project, because it contains external packages that indeed are using CMake.

1. Click on "Not now" to not configure RIOT as CMake project
2. Click on "Never" to never ask again whether RIOT should be configured as CMake project (not shown in screenshot)

• Confirm that when hovering over RIOT_BOARD in the source code, IntelliSense shows that it expands to "native".

Note

IntelliSense depends on information how to compile the source code to work correctly, which is provided in the file compile_commands.json. You can regenerate this file by running make compile-commands in the app you are working on.

Warning

Re-run make compile-commands when:

1. You create, delete or rename source files
2. You change the set of modules or packages used
3. You have updated the RIOT repository
4. You are switching the board to compile for

• Extend the message to be printed, e.g. by adding a puts("..."); statement in the source code
• Save the modified source code (e.g. Ctrl+S)
• Open the integrated terminal by clicking on the terminal tab at the bottom
• Navigate to ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world using cd ~/RIOT/examples/hello-world
• Run the make command to build the code
• Run make make term to launch the application
• The result should look like:

Congratulations! You just compiled your first RIOT application. To run RIOT on real hardware, proceed with the next to sections.

Installing usbipd-win

0. Open the release page of usbipd-win
1. Download the installer (file extension .msi) of the most recent release

Once the download is completed:

1. Open the downloaded installer

1. Confirm that you indeed want to execute the installer by clicking "OK".

The setup of usbipd-win opens.

1. Click on the "Install" button to proceed with the installation.

1. Confirm the installation by clicking on "Yes".

Eventually, the setup will inform you of the completion of the installation.

1. Click the "Close" button to acknowledge.

Attach a USB device to WSL

Note

Attaching a USB device to WSL needs to be repeated after any of the following happens:

1. Windows has been restarted (or hibernated)
2. WSL (the Ubuntu terminal window) has been restarted
3. The USB device has been lost (e.g. unplugging and plugging back in)

Note

You do not need to install the Windows USB drivers, Linux will use its own anyway. All supported board run on Linux out of the box without the need of drivers to be installed.

1. Search for powershell in search field in the task bar
2. Right-click on the search result "Windows PowerShell"
3. Select "Run as administrator"

1. Click on "Yes" to confirm running the PowerShell as admin

1. Type the command usbipd list and confirm with the return-key
2. Identify the USB device to share. In this guide we use an ESP32 development board, which almost all use an USB to UART bridge (here the CP2104).
3. Run usbipd bin --busid <BUSID>, but replace <BUSID> with the correct BUSID. E.g. 2-5 for the CP2104 identified in step 2.
4. Run usbipd attach --wsl --busid <BUSID>
   • If an error (such as above in red) is shown that WSL is not running, just start the Ubuntu terminal now and repeat (step 5.). If it worked the first time, no need to run it again.

Note

If you have trouble identifying the USB device to attach, unplug before running usbipd list. Run it again with the USB device plugged in. The new entry in the list is the device you want to attach to WSL.

Flash an ESP32 Development Board

After all of the previous sections are completed, we can finally flash some real hardware. In this case, we use an esp32-mh-et-live-minikit development board. The guide should mostly apply to all other boards as well.

Note

Some boards require extra steps to be flashed, such as pressing a button to enter a bootloader or attaching an external programmer. Refer to the documentation of the board to check if extra steps are required.

This assumes that the USB UART bridge of the ESP32 development board has been attached to WSL and VS Code has been launched from within WSL by running code . inside the RIOT repository from the Ubuntu terminal.

1. Open the examples folder
2. Open the default folder within examples
3. Open the main.c file in the default folder
4. Select the "Terminal" tab at the bottom
5. Enter cd ~/RIOT/examples/default to enter the default folder also in the terminal
6. Run make BOARD=esp32-mh-et-live-minikit compile-commands
   • You can replace esp32-mh-et-live-minikit with the name of any other supported board

Note

Did you notice that IntelliSense did not find headers in main.c when you opened it? This should be fixed after the command in 6 has completed.

1. Now run make BOARD=esp32-mh-et-live-minikit BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 flash term

Note

Tired of typing BOARD=<NAME_OF_THE_BOARD> and BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1? You can add those to the Makefile of your app or run export BOARD=BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1 in the shell. The export will not persist needs to be repeated for every new terminal window.

When compiling with BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1, the toolchains distributed in the riot/riotbuild docker image will be used for compilation. This image contains toolchains for all supported RIOT board and is extensively tested in our CI.

The first time you build with BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1, the image is pulled automatically.

This may take a while ...

... until eventually the docker image is pulled and the build will start. Subsequent builds will no longer need to download the toolchain and be a lot quicker.

After building and flashing the firmware has succeeded, a shell will open.

1. Wait for the boot message to appear.
   • The board may boot faster than your PC is able to connect to the serial. If you see nothing after "Welcome to pyterm!" for 5 seconds, try hitting the reset button on the board to boot it again.
2. You are now connected to the RIOT shell running on the board. Try running the help command to get a list of commands supported by the board.
3. You can drop out of the RIOT serial by pressing Ctrl + C and return to the Linux shell.

Known Issues

Flashing Fails with Programmers using HID

The Linux Kernel in WSL currently has CONFIG_USB_HIDDEV disabled. Hence, programmers using HID as transport do not work for now. The (non-conclusive) list of affected programmers is:

• Atmel/Microchip eDBG
• Atmel/Microchip ICE
• Any ARM CMSIS DAP compatible programmers

Note

It is possible to install a native Windows flash application and invoke that from within WSL.

The (non-conclusive) list of programmers that work with WSL out of the box is:

• ST-Link (any version), including cheap clones
• Segger J-Link, including the J-Link EDU Mini
• Any serial based bootloader (e.g. ESP boards, Arduino Bootloaders, ...)
• Black Magic Probe
• Jeff Probe
• Any other non HID USB programmer