Building OpenOCD under Windows using MSYS2

Replies to Building OpenOCD under Windows using MSYS2

• Thanks for this great article!!! It is so helpful.

  One item of errata: this command:
  >>pacman -S ${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-ftdi
  didn’t work for me: package not found error.

  I suppose you instead meant:
  >>pacman -S ${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-libftdi

  Reply

• I am having difficulty building the first mingw package:

  $ cd ~/mingw-packages/mingw-w64-libusb
  $ makepkg –config ${MAKEPKG_CONFIG} -i
  ==> ERROR: Cannot find the strip binary required for object file stripping.

  I’m running windows 7 here. Don’t know if that would mess it up. I followed all your other instructions carefully.

  Reply

• I found a solution to the “missing strip binary” problem. Just run:
  >> export PATH=${PATH}:/mingw64/bin
  The “strip.exe” binary was sitting in /mingw64/bin

  Reply

  • Hey,
    Thanks for these comments. I need to update the article. I think something is changed in last months. I will make some tries…

• Hi Rocco,
  I have the following error at the end:

  $ makepkg –config ${MAKEPKG_CONFIG}
  ==> ERROR: conflicts should be an array
  ==> ERROR: provides should be an array

  What should I do?
  Thanks so much for your help

  Reply

  • Dear, as you can see on top of this article, I have updated it yesterday since I had to rebuilt openocd and I experimented some problems.

    My suggestion is to delete the old files and restart the whole procedure. By the way, if you want to skip the procedure, I have a copy of OpenOCD. I can add it in the download section.

• Hi Rocco,
  That would be awesome!
  Will your copy work on a 64-bit Windows 10 machine?

  PS: I just did the whole procedure today. So probably your update yesterday didn’t work for my specific case. Anyway, I will be extremely happy to get your executable 🙂

  Reply

  • Yes, I am using it in ChibiStudio and I have tested it on Win7 32bit and Win7 64bit. I have shared it to the ChibiOS community and I haven’t received any report ’til now. It is now available on the download page in the last section.

• Hi Rocco.
  Sadly it doesn’t work. I get an error when starting up “openocd.exe”:
  ” The program cannot get started because libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll is missing on your computer. You can possibly solve this issue by reinstalling this program on your computer”.

  Reply

  • Can you post the arguments you have used while launching openocd? What interface are you using?

• This is how I open it:
  >”C:\Apps\OpenOCD-0.9.0-Win32\bin\openocd” -f “C:\Apps\OpenOCD-0.9.0-Win32\share\openocd\scripts\interface\stlink-v2.cfg” -f “C:\Apps\OpenOCD-0.9.0-Win32\share\openocd\scripts\target\stm32f7x.cfg” -s “C:\Apps\OpenOCD-0.9.0-Win32\share\openocd\scripts”

  I’ve been reading a bit on StackOverflow about this missing “libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll” file. Apparently this issue arises if you’ve built the executable without certain compiler flags. The quickest fix is to find that dll file inside your compiler (I cannot find it in mine), and put it also in the download section. I just need to put that dll in the same folder as the “openocd.exe”, and then it should work 🙂

  Here is the StackOverflow question related to the issue:
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4702732/the-program-cant-start-because-libgcc-s-dw2-1-dll-is-missing

  Thank you so much for your help 🙂

  Reply

  • Take a look to chapter 2.6 of this article. There are commands I use to launch it from bash. Note that according to your environment variables you should or should not use the whole path to launch openocd.exe.

• Note: I have deleted the original content of my folder “OpenOCD-0.9.0-Win32”, and replaced it with the content from your downloaded zip folder. So I have sort of ‘updated’ my OpenOCD version in a manual way 🙂

  Reply

• I just downloaded the missing dll here:
  http://www.opendll.com/index.php?arch=32Bit&file-download=libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll&version#
  Now it looks like OpenOCD starts to function!

  Thank you so much 🙂

  Reply

• Although OpenOCD now starts up without errors, and even connects to the chip, I still cannot flash my STM32F7 microcontroller. The error I got initially (with the ‘older’ version of OpenOCD) still persists. I have explained everything in detail on this StackOverflow post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38033130/how-to-use-the-gdb-gnu-debugger-and-openocd-for-microcontroller-debugging-fr

  Carmine Noviello, the writer of this book: https://leanpub.com/mastering-stm32
  told me that he got my “.elf” file flashed through GDB – OpenOCD without problem to the STM32F7 microcontroller. He compiled the newest OpenOCD source code on his Macintosh.

  Sadly Windows 10 seems to have some more troubles..

  Reply

  • Kristof the problem is informations are too… fragmentary. I cannot help you in this way.

    Are you using a toolchain? The toolchain usually provides a gdb server? The toolchain usually uses openocd? What compiler are you using?

    I have always used ChibiStudio (eclipse, arm-none-eabi toolchain, openocd, gcc). I have just used my version on OpenOCD to flash and run a demo on STM32F7 using a pc with Win 10 64bit.

• Hi Rocco,
  I took on a personal mission to learn the whole embedded chain (compile – link – flash – debug) manually, without any IDE involved. So I’m using the windows cmd terminal to go through every step.
  I have dedicated a detailed StackOverflow question to this procedure. You can find it here:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38033130/how-to-use-the-gdb-gnu-debugger-and-openocd-for-microcontroller-debugging-fr

  Thank you so much for your help. You are really a kind guy!
  I appreciate it so much. I’m sure that the community is grateful to you, for all the interesting articles on your website!

  Reply

  • While I appreciate a lot your effort, I have a couple of tips if you are resolute to proceed in this way:
    1. Uninstall winzozz!
    2. Destroy every trace of winzozz using fire. Be careful. Use gloves and goggles: safety first!

    3. If you are to ignoring first 2 tips, install an eclipse based toolchain like chibistudio in order to understand if compiler, cross compiler, gdb server and debugger work fine
    4. Try to remove, automatisms one at a time.

    Good luck 🙂

• Hi, I am trying to follow the steps above, but failed at the following step. Any idea? Please help. Thanks.

  $ makepkg-mingw -sLf
==> Making package: mingw-w64-openocd-git 0.10.0.rc1.r1.gc404ff5-1 (15 Nov 2017 23:04:57)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
==> Retrieving sources...
-> Updating openocd git repo...
Fetching origin
==> Validating source files with sha256sums...
openocd ... Skipped
==> Extracting sources...
-> Creating working copy of code git repo...
Reset branch 'makepkg'
==> Starting prepare()...
which: no libtoolize in (/mingw32/bin:/mingw32/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/)
which: no glibtoolize in (/mingw32/bin:/mingw32/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/)
./bootstrap: Error: libtool is required
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
Aborting...

  Reply

  • Hi,
    usually I follow this procedure from time to time in order to build a fresh OpenOCD for ChibiStudio. Everytime I usually update this guide which actually is a reminder for my self. I run this procedure last time few month ago and it worked. I am not an expert but I think that maybe the problem is that you do not have installed the base development packages

    pacman -S base-devel

    Let me know if you succeed or we will find a way out together and I will update this guide. Thanks for your feedback.

• Thanks for the great tutorial!

  Since I needed to build a specific version of OpenOCD, I wasn’t sure how to specify this in the source URL. In case anyone else needs it here is an example:
  git+https://github.com/ntfreak/openocd.git#tag=v0.10.0-rc2

  And here is the link where this is documented:
  https://jlk.fjfi.cvut.cz/arch/manpages/man/PKGBUILD.5#USING_VCS_SOURCES

  Reply

  • Thanks for commenting and sharing additional info.

• I just used this page again to make a fresh OpenOCD installation. Thanks!
  Please consider adding the following commands at the end of paragraph 4.1:

  # git config –global pack.windowMemory “100m”
  # git config –global pack.packSizeLimit “100m”
  # git config –global pack.threads “1”

  These commands enlarge the memory allocated to git, preventing crashes when cloning large repositories.

  Reply

  • Hey Kristof,
    thanks for commenting. I am updating the article right now.

  • Hi Rocco, that’s great :-). Is the patch you mentioned in paragraph 7.1 still needed for the latest openocd version?

  • Hey there,
    as far as I know, that patch has been already merged long time ago. I left the paragraph as example in case user has to patch something else…

• Hello Rocco, Thank you very much for this great valuable blog..I was able to execute all the steps you mentioned here successfully and able to build my custom modified openocd binary very fast..I appreciate the clean descriptions of steps in this article.. I was skeptical about the build with so many dependencies of many components but overall I didn’t see any issues. Only problem I see is the time taken to complete the build.configure script takes much time to finish before compilation starts.I wanted to know if there is a way to override the configure procedure for successive makes.

  Reply

  • Hello Vimal,
    thanks. To be honest, I wrote this guide to myself the first time I was able to build OpenOCD. Since then, I am using and updating it every time I am building OpenOCD under Windows. Also, there are many contribution to this article for other users whom experienced issues during the process.

    That said, i think this is the topic I am less confident of in the entire blog. If there is any way to override the configure procedure, I do not know it. If you will find anything interesting about this, please come back and contribute: I will update he article with your finding.

  • Hello Rocco,

    For the purpose of making openOCD builds faster I edited the /mingw-packages/mingw-w64-openocd-git/ PKGBUILD and now my openOCD build process will complete within 10 minutes, earlier with the original PKGBUILD it took around 45 minutes to 1 hour to get finished.The edited PKGBUILD file is copied below.I removed the git repo update in PKGBUILD along with pkgver(), prepare() function invocations and ./configure script run.The removal of git repo update from PKGBUILD is anyway a must if you have changed the openOCD source code for something since otherwise when you build it without removing git repo update your local changes will be replaced with the original git repo code.
    
# Maintainer: Andrew Leech
# Contributor: Ray Donnelly
# Contributor: Rocco Marco Guglielmi

    _realname=openocd
    pkgbase=mingw-w64-${_realname}-git
    pkgname="${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-${_realname}-git"
    provides=("${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-${_realname}")
    conflicts=("${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-${_realname}")
    pkgver=0.10.0.r1293.g7c88e76a7
    pkgrel=1
    pkgdesc="OpenOCD - Open On-Chip Debugger (mingw-w64)"
    arch=('any')
    url="http://openocd.org/"
    license=("GPLv2")
    options=('!ccache')
    depends=("${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-hidapi"
    "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-libusb"
    "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-libusb-compat"
    "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-libftdi"
    "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-libjaylink")
    makedepends=("${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-gcc"
    "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-pkg-config"
    )

    build() {
    cd "${srcdir}"/${_realname}
    make
    }

    package() {
    cd "${srcdir}"/${_realname}
    make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install
    install -Dm644 COPYING ${pkgdir}${MINGW_PREFIX}/share/licenses/${_realname}/COPYING

    # bsdtar can't convert non-ascii filenames to UTF-8 when run in
# non-UTF-8 locale. It proceeds to pack them anyway embedding raw
# binary filenames in the traditional tar headers.
}

  • Hello Vimal,
    thanks for contributing. Next time I am going to build OpenOCD I’ll give a try to your mods and eventually fix\update the article.

• Hello Rocco,
  I am now looking for a way to build the open OCD arm binary for a cortex A core running in Linux.I have found some options like XPack Open OCD which provides build scripts for compiling OpenOCD source code for ARM platform but it needs a dedicated ARM hardware (The current platform for Arm GNU/Linux and Windows production builds is a Debian 9, running on a ROCK Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM and 256 GB of fast M.2 SSD.). Is there any way to cross compile the OpenOCD source for ARM platform in Windows/Linux ?

  Reply

  • Hello Vimal,
    to be honest I ma not so expert. I barely found a way to build OpenOCD under Windows and what you are seeing it’s a tutorial for my self I am updating every time I am building openocd.

    I would suggest you to go ask on their official IRC channel
    http://openocd.org/discussion/irc/