ELDK usage

There are various ARM toolchains available which can be used for DaVinci U-Boot and Linux development on ARM side. One of these is ELDK - the Embedded Linux Development Kit - from DENX Software Engineering (the people behind U-Boot). If you like to test/use ELDK for DaVinci development, this article may help you.

Note: This article only gives you some rough ELDK quick start instructions and DaVinci specials. For more and general information about ELDK see ELDK overview.

Download

Go to

ELDK download page

and download 4.1/arm-linux-x86/iso/ arm-2007-01-21.iso (~210MB) from one of the various mirrors.

Note: We use the ELDK with standard GLibc. If you like a smaller system, consider using the UCLibc version arm-2007-01-22-uclibc.iso

Installation

Put downloaded arm-2007-01-21.iso to directory where you like to install ELDK. Then, create two directories, one temporary we mount the *.iso image to and one where we install ELDK into:

host > mkdir eldk
host > mkdir install_mount

Change into ELDK installation directory and mount iso image in top directory. Most probably (depends on your system configuration), this has to be done as root:

host > cd eldk/
host/eldk > su
host/eldk # mount -o loop,exec ../arm-2007-01-21.iso ../install_mount/
host/eldk # exit

Exit to do installation as normal user. Then, content of iso image should be visible:

host/eldk > ls ../install_mount/
.   arm     ELDK_FIXOWNER  etc    install      RPMS  tools
..  common  ELDK_MAKEDEV   icons  README.html  sys   version

If you like more info about ELDK and what we are doing here, open README.html above in web browser. Now we install ARM development environment (usable for DaVinci) in current (host/eldk) directory:

host/eldk > ../install_mount/install arm

This installs ELDK in eldk directory. Use install option -d <dir> to select an other installation directory.

... take some time

If installation finished, make eldk_init script executable...

host/eldk > chmod u+x eldk_init

... and unmount install ISO image, we don't need it any more:

host/eldk > su
host/eldk # umount ../install_mount/
host/eldk # exit

If you like, delete arm-2007-01-21.iso now if you need the space. And download again, if you need it later again ;)

Usage

Usage is simple. Every time you like to use ELDK tools, go to ELDK installation directory (e.g. host/eldk) and execute there

host/eldk > ./eldk_init arm

This sets some environment variables necessary for ELDK usage:

ARCH=arm
CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-
DEPMOD=host/eldk/usr/bin/depmod.pl
PATH=host/eldk/usr/bin:host/eldk/bin:...

and then you can use ELDK tools. E.g. change to directories where U-Boot or DaVinci Linux kernel is stored and compile it.

Note: If you don't like to execute eldk_init everytime manually, put the environment variables set by this script into some global configuration files, e.g. .bashrc.