Keil with GNU CodeSourcery for Cortex-M3 TI EvalBot

Open the qs-autonomous project in Keil UVision. You may work on a copy of the directory if you want to keep the original unchanged. If you do so, make the copy in the same directory, because we will need some dependencies later.

The project files should compile, but the link fails because the size of the project exceeds the 32K limit of the evaluation version.

Open the Components, environements & books dialog box (also available under the Project > Manage >... menu). In the Folders/Extensions tab:

• check Use GCC
• set the Prefix to arm-none-eabi-
• set the Folder according to the path where you installed the CodeSourcery toolchain.

Optional: In the Books tab update and/or add the links to the gcc, as, ld and other docs from your CodeSourcery install.

This dialog box is also available from the Project > Options for Target menu.

I assume that you already picked LM3S9B92 in the Device tab.

In the Output tab:

• you may check Debug information to include the necessary symbols to make debugging easier
• you may change the name of the executable of your program
• you should Select Folders for Objects... the subdirectory gcc within the project directory to avoid mixing different object files form different compilers.

Select the type of listing that you want. You should Select Folder for Listings... the gcc subdirectory as well to avoid mixing output listings from other compilers.

Optional: You may execute some command before or after build. The flashing tool from TI is able to flash directly the .elf executable file format that gcc will generate into the memory of the target. In case you are using another flashing tool which does not support this format but instead requires a pure binary image of the executable, you may add the following command to generate such a binary:

arm-none-eabi-objcopy -Obinary gcc/qs-autonomous.elf gcc/qs-autonomous.bin

Note that we assume that you added to your path the CodeSourcery executables that you installed, otherwise, you will have to set the entire access path to the arm-none-eabi-objcopy command.

Several important things to note about the CC tab:

• The Define will depend on your project, the ones on the figure are the required ones for the qs-autonomous project: TARGET_IS_TEMPEST_RB1 UART_BUFFERED PART_LM3S9B96
• You MUST check Compile Thumb Code
• APCS is the ARM standard to perform function calls between C and assembler, it does not harm to check it…
• Choose No Optimization if you want to debug your code by stepping C source together with assembler. If you optimize, gcc will generate a twisted assembler code which will be very far from your original C source, making it really difficult to step them together.
• Include path must be .;..\;..\..\..\ for the qs-autonomous project, you will obviously have to adapt this to your own project.

There is nothing special to check in the Assembler tab for this project.

In the Linker tab:

• Be sure to check No Standard System Startup File and No Standard System Libraries
• No need for math lib in our project
• Text Start MUST be 0x0 otherwise gcc is called with an empty -Wl and fails. We might as well set Data Start to 0x20000000 for coherency.
• The project needs a library libdriver-cm3.a. TI included the GNU GCC compiled version so there is no need to recompile it with GCC. Just set the Include Path to ..\..\..\driverlib\gcc-cm3 and the Include Libraries to driver-cm3.
• ld needs a script which describes where to put what and how into the memory of the target. This script can be quite complex. Fortunately, TI gives us one in the project folder that you just need to select: qs-autonomous.ld.

  You can find very good explanations about this script by reading the ld documentation (included in the CodeSourcery you installed) or on this excellent page. It deals with the STM32, another Cortex-M3 development kit by ST Microelectronics, but all the explanations remain valid in our case as well.

To debug your program on the target using TI Stellaris ICDI, you need to set these. Specially, do not forget to check Program and Verify of the Flash section. It should be already set if your environment was correctly configured, that is the TI drivers installed, and the target attached and you have already debugged programs on your EvalBot.

As we included the GCC binary of the library libdriver-cm3.a (Linker tab), we have to remove the Libraries folder from the resources in the Project windows on the left: Right click on the Libraries and Remove Group Libraries....

The source file startup_gcc.c performs all necessary initialization tasks to execute your C program, for example:

• initializing a stack pointer
• initializing an interrupt vector table
• initializing the BSS section to 0
• copying the initialized variables from the flash to the SRAM
• initializing a Reset vector which will ultimately execute your main() entry point at the end of the initialisation.

This source is very important, is usually specific to the compiler and quite complex to write. Fortunately, TI had the good idea to include a startup_gcc.c file for GNU GCC that we are going to use. So remove the Keil startup_rvmdk.S file from the project sources: right click on it in the left window (Project) and Remove File.... Then right click on Source and Add Files to Group Sources.... Select startup_gcc.c from the project directory.

The source startup_gcc.c can be downloaded from this link and explanations can be found from the excellent page already mentioned.

The source file display96x16x1.c calls the string function strlen(). You just need to replace this line:

ulLen = strlen(pcStr);

by this one:

for (ulLen=0;pcStr[ulLen];ulLen++);

If you want to keep the original source unchanged, just remove the display96x16x1.c file from the Sources, make a local copy into the project directiry, add it to the sources of the project, and edit this local copy.