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Local Installation

Ashes is available for Linux (and potentially for all Unix systems, still needs testing). As much of the lower level of ASHES depends calling RASP30 functions, setting up RASP30 is required before setting up ASHES. This guide explains the recommended installation method.

System Requirements

The instructions has been tested on the following systems:

  • Ubuntu 22.04 (Linux x64)
  • (potentially other Unix OS, still waiting for further testing)

Preparing a Python Environment

Creating a dedicated Python environment is recommended. It helps:

  • Avoid conflicts with system Python or other projects installed on your machine.
  • Keep dependencies isolated, so that package upgrades or experiments in other projects do not break Ashes.

This guide chooses to use venv, the standard library for creating virtual environments in Python, as the package manager to create a virtual environment.

The following instructions are for setting up a virtual environment.

  • Create a virtual environment using one of the package managers:

    # create a virtual environment named env_ashes
python3 -m venv env_ashes

# activate the virtual environment
source env_ashes/bin/activate

  • Ensure the latest pip version is installed. To update pip, run the following command from inside the virtual environment:

    pip install --upgrade pip

Installing Ashes

Cloning Ashes

Clone the Ashes repository into your workspace (FOR DEVELOPEMENT PHASE: please use the ORS2526 branch as that includes the updated files that uses environment variables rather than hard coded paths for the ashes and rasp30 directories):

git clone git@github.com:GTIceLab/ashes.git

git clone https://github.com/GTIceLab/ashes.git

Cloning and Setup RASP30

As aforementioned, RASP30 is a necessary dependency of Ashes. The following instructions guides you on how to install RASP30.

  • First we must clone the RASP30 repository, and a good place to clone it to is inside the Ashes repository:

    # navigate into the ashes directory
cd ~/ashes

# clone the RASP30 repository
git clone git@github.com:jhasler/rasp30.git

    # navigate into the ashes directory
cd ~/ashes

# clone the RASP30 repository
git clone https://github.com/jhasler/rasp30.git

  • Next, run the following commands to install the required dependencies:

    # System dependencies
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt-dev
sudo apt-get install tcsh
sudo apt-get install tcl
sudo apt-get install bison libx11-dev exuberant-ctags flex t1-xfree86-nonfree ttf-xfree86-nonfree ttf-xfree86-nonfree-syriac xfonts-75dpi xfonts-100dpi 
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

# Python dependencies
pip install lxml

  • Navigate to the vpr folder and run make, then check with run_quick_test.pl:

    # navigate to the vpr directory
cd rasp30/vtr_release/vpr

# build vpr with make, you may need to run this more than once
make

# check with run_quick_test.pl, you should expect "Testing VPR" to pass
cd ..
./run_quick_test.pl

  • Now, modify .bashrc to add the vpr directory to PATH:

    # use the following command to edit .bashrc
nano ~/.bashrc

# add the following line to the end of the .bashrc
export PATH=/home/$USER/ashes/rasp30/vtr_release/vpr:$PATH

  • Close your terminal and reopen it. Run vpr --version, you should expect to see a short message containing the version of vpr.

  • You also need to install the msp430 compiler. Notice that we are installing the old version because RASP30 is built on the old version:

    sudo apt-get install gcc-msp430

    sudo apt-get install gcc-msp430 gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi

Install Scilab

RASP30 depends on Scilab, so the following instructions are dedicated to how to install Scilab and the necessary modules:

  • Download the Scilab 6.0.0 binaries from https://www.scilab.org/download/previous-versions.

  • Navigate to the downloads folder, and unzip the contents of scilab-6.0.0.bin.linux-x86_64.tar.gz into /opt:

    # navigate to Downloads, which contains your tarball
cd ~/Downloads

# extract into opt directory, you should have a new directory /opt/scilab-6.0.0 in the end
sudo tar -xvzf scilab-6.0.0.bin.linux-x86_64.tar.gz -C /opt

  • Modify .bashrc by adding the following line to the end to update the PATH so that your system recognizes scilab:

    # use the following command to edit .bashrc
nano ~/.bashrc

# add the following line to the end of the .bashrc
export PATH=/opt/scilab-6.0.0/bin:$PATH

  • Close your terminal and reopen it, now run scilab, the Scilab 6.0.0 Console should pop up.

  • Install the following modules from the menu in Scilab (Applications > Module Manager - ATOMS):

    • (GUI) GUI Builder
    • (Sginal Processing) Serial Communication
    • (Scilab Development) Specfun
    • (Data Analysis) Distfun

Setting Environment Variables

Finally, we set two environment variables by adding the following two lines to the end of .bashrc:

# environment variable for the path to the ashes directory
export ASHESPATH=/home/$USER/ashes

# environment variable for the path to the rasp30 directory
export RASPPATH=/home/$USER/ashes/rasp30

TEMPORARY: Setup asm2ihex2.sh in RASP30

Create a new file asm2ihex2.sh in the directory ~/ashes/rasp30/prog_assembly/libs/sh and copy the following into it. This will become unnecessary once we decide to package RASP30 into the Ashes repository.

#!/bin/bash
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (C) 2001 Authors
#
# This source file may be used and distributed without restriction provided
# that this copyright statement is not removed from the file and that any
# derivative work contains the original copyright notice and the associated
# disclaimer.
#
# This source file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published
# by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.1
#
# This source is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
# ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public
# License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with this source; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
# Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
#
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 
# File Name: asm2ihex.sh
# 
# Author(s):
#             - Olivier Girard,    olgirard@gmail.com
#
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# $Rev: 141 $
# $LastChangedBy: olivier.girard $
# $LastChangedDate: 2012-05-05 23:22:06 +0200 (Sat, 05 May 2012) $
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------


asmfile=$1.s43;
verfile=$1.v;
incfile=$RASPPATH/prog_assembly/libs/includes/openMSP430_defines.v;
linkfile=$RASPPATH/prog_assembly/libs/includes/template.x;
headfile=$RASPPATH/prog_assembly/libs/includes/template_defs.asm;

#submitfile=submit.f;


###############################################################################

#                            Parameter Check                                  #

###############################################################################

EXPECTED_ARGS=6

if [ $# -ne $EXPECTED_ARGS ]; then
  echo "ERROR    : wrong number of arguments"
  echo "USAGE    : asm2ihex.sh <test name> <test assembler file> <linker script> <assembler define>  <prog mem size> <data mem size> <peripheral addr space size> <output filepath>"
  echo "Example  : asm2ihex.sh c-jump_jge  ../src/c-jump_jge.s43 ../bin/template.x ../bin/pmem.h 2048            128             512 ../ashes/test2"
  exit 1
fi


###############################################################################

#               Check if definition & assembler files exist                   #

###############################################################################


if [ ! -e $2 ]; then
    echo "Assembler file doesn't exist: $2"
    exit 1
fi


###############################################################################

#               Generate the linker definition file                           #

###############################################################################


PER_SIZE=$5
DMEM_SIZE=$4
PMEM_SIZE=$3
PMEM_BASE=$((0x10000-$PMEM_SIZE))
STACK_INIT=$((PER_SIZE+0x0080))
path=$6


cp  $linkfile  $6/pmem.x
cp  $headfile  $6/pmem_defs.asm
sed -i "s/PMEM_BASE/$PMEM_BASE/g"    $6/pmem.x
sed -i "s/PMEM_SIZE/$PMEM_SIZE/g"    $6/pmem.x
sed -i "s/DMEM_SIZE/$DMEM_SIZE/g"    $6/pmem.x
sed -i "s/PER_SIZE/$PER_SIZE/g"      $6/pmem.x
sed -i "s/STACK_INIT/$STACK_INIT/g"  $6/pmem.x


sed -i "s/PER_SIZE/$PER_SIZE/g"      $6/pmem_defs.asm
sed -i "s/PMEM_SIZE/$PMEM_SIZE/g"    $6/pmem_defs.asm


###############################################################################

#                  Compile, link & generate IHEX file                         #

###############################################################################
cd $6


msp430-as      -alsm         $2     -o $1.o     > $1.l43
msp430-objdump -xdsStr       $1.o              >> $1.l43
msp430-ld      -T $6/pmem.x   $1.o   -o $1.elf

#msp430-elf-objcopy -O ihex       $1.elf    $1.ihex