Toolchain installation on macOS

We recommend using the Contiki-NG Docker image for easy setup of a consistent development environment: doc:docker.

Alternatively, you can install the toolchains natively on your system. This page describes how to do so, for OS X.

Install development tools for Contiki-NG

Start by installing Xcode Command Line Utilities

$ xcode-select --install

This guide makes extensive usage of homebrew. If you don’t already have it, install it:

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Using homebrew, install a bunch of helper tools, such as git, srecord, doxygen (to build the API documentation), mosquitto (to test Contiki-NG’s MQTT functionality), tuntap (for tunslip and to run native examples with networking), rlwrap (for shell history), python (python 3 for running scripts and pip).

$ brew install git git-lfs srecord doxygen uncrustify ant mosquitto wget libmagic rlwrap python
$ brew tap caskroom/cask
$ brew cask install tuntap

Install some python packages

Those are used/needed by some Contiki-NG Python scripts.

$ pip install intelhex pyserial python-magic

Install the ARM GCC toolchain

An ARM compiler is needed to compile for ARM-based platforms.

Using homebrew

You can install the arm-gcc toolchain using homebrew.

# to tap the repository
$ brew tap contiki-ng/contiki-ng-arm
# to install the toolchain
$ brew install contiki-ng-arm-gcc-bin

This will automatically install the same version as the one currently installed in the docker image and used by the CI tests.

The formula itself is hosted under contiki-ng/homebrew-contiki-ng-arm

Manual Installation

You should download the toolchain from https://developer.arm.com/open-source/gnu-toolchain/gnu-rm/downloads or you can grab an older version from launchpad.net.

$ wget https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded/5.0/5-2015-q4-major/+download/gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_2-2015q4-20151219-mac.tar.bz2
$ tar jxf gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_2-2015q4-20151219-mac.tar.bz2

This will create a directory named gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_2-2015q4 in your current working dir. Add <working-directory>/gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_2-2015q4/bin to your path.

You can also try using the latest version, but be prepared to get compilation warnings and/or errors.

Install the MSP430 toolchain

The best way to achieve this on OS X is through homebrew, using a formula provided in a tap. Follow the instructions here: https://github.com/tgtakaoka/homebrew-mspgcc

Install Java JDK for the Cooja network simulator

Nothing exciting here, just download and install Java for OSX. You will need the JDK 17, not just the runtime.

Install a CoAP client (libcoap)

Optionally and if you want to use CoAP examples, you can install the CoAP client distributed with libcoap.

Firstly you will need the following packages:

  • automake

  • autoconf

  • libtool

  • pkg-config

They can be installed with homebrew:

$ brew install automake pkg-config libtool autoconf

Then clone libcoap, compile and build it:

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/obgm/libcoap.git
$ cd libcoap/
$ ./autogen.sh 
$ ./configure --disable-doxygen --disable-documentation --disable-shared
$ make
$ make install

This will install coap-client under /usr/local/bin

$ coap-client 
coap-client v4.2.0alpha -- a small CoAP implementation
(c) 2010-2015 Olaf Bergmann <bergmann@tzi.org>

usage: coap-client [-A type...] [-t type] [-b [num,]size] [-B seconds] [-e text]
		[-m method] [-N] [-o file] [-P addr[:port]] [-p port]
		[-s duration] [-O num,text] [-T string] [-v num] [-a addr] [-U]

		[-u user] [-k key] [-r] URI
[...]

Clone Contiki-NG

$ git clone https://github.com/contiki-ng/contiki-ng.git
$ cd contiki-ng
$ git submodule update --init --recursive

Note: we recommend cloning and then initializing the submodules rather than using git clone --recursive. The latter results in submodules that use absolute paths to the top-level git, rather than relative paths, which are more flexible for a number of reasons.