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| layout | title | description | date | categories | redirect_from | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| page | Compiling AVR-C code with a modern build system | Bringing Bazel to 8-bit microcontrollers | 2020-08-24 9:30:00 | avr embedded bazel |
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When writing software for an Arduino, or any other AVR-based device, there are generally three main options. You can use the Arduino IDE with arduino-cli, which is in my opinion, a clunky system that is great for high levels of abstraction and teaching people how to program, but lacks any kind of easy customization I am interested in. If you are looking for something more advanced (and works in your favorite IDE), you might look at PlatformIO. Finally, you can just program without any Hardware Abstraction Library at all, and use avr-libc along with avr-gcc and avrdude.
This final option is my favorite by far, as it both forces me to think about how the system I am building is actually working "behind the scenes", and lets me do everything exactly the way I want. Unfortunately, when working directly with the AVR system libraries, the only buildsystem / tool that is available (without a lot of extra work) is Make. As somebody who spends 90% of his time working with higher-level buildsystems like Gradle and Bazel, I don't really like needing to deal with Makefiles, and manually handle dependency loading. This got me thinking. I have spent a lot of time working in Bazel, and cross-compiling for the armv7l platform via the FRC Toolchain. How hard can it be to add AVR Toolchain support to Bazel?
The answer: Its pretty easy.