How to set up an open-source Stellaris Launchpad toolchain on Arch Linux

We got some Stellaris boards from Texas Instruments. Two each, of course. We put ‘em in the closet until the dev chain matures. After getting a nudge from miceuz, I finally decided to try it out. It turns out that setting up on Arch Linux has now become trivial.

There are many ways to get it working. I prefer open-source. The AUR is a total mess of EABI packages. As per cross-compiling tool guidelines, the proper name for this toolchain is arm-none-eabi (if no vendor is specified). This name is taken by the Sourcery CodeBench stuff. Note also that it’s a binary redistribution.

Another set of packages (more widely adopted) is cross-arm-none-eabi-*. This is what I want. It is based on the summon-arm-toolchain script and uses the GCC toolchain.

To debug, you will also need OpenOCD. To flash, lm4tools. Create a few config files, and you are go.

So, the procedure.

1. As a bare minimum, get the following from AUR: cross-arm-none-eabi-gcc lm4flash-git.
2. For debugging, also get these: cross-arm-none-eabi-gdb openocd-git. I asked veox to pack the latter. By the time you read this, the stable openocd from community will probably support Stellaris, so just use pacman. There is also lmicdiusb-git, but I haven’t tried that.
3. Add a udev rule, so you don’t have to sudo all the time.
4. Test your debugger. As per the guide, I used stellaris-launchpad-template-gcc to avoid obscure TI licenses.
5. Optionally, get the official StellarisWare library. The page has broken JavaScript and wants you to log in, which I couldn’t. If you do manage to accompish this feat, know that you won’t be able to use their code for anything – just read the license. I propose we ditch it.

Now just figure out why use this instead of your usual workhorse. Perhaps a CAN bus interface by Thomas Fischl, the guy who gave us USBasp?..