Building Projects

Warning

This is the documentation for an old version of tbot. Please head over to

for the latest docs!

tbot has a few facilities to ease building your projects.

Build-Host

In tbot, your code is compiled on the so called build-host. The build-host should be defined in your lab-config and define the available toolchains. To show how this works, I will make three examples:

Local Lab-Host as Build-Host

When using your localhost as the buildhost, you can no longer omit the lab-config. You have to define a very basic local lab, which additionally also is a BuildMachine:

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from tbot.machine import linux

class LocalLab(linux.lab.LocalLabHost, linux.BuildMachine):
    name = "local"

    @property
    def toolchains(self) -> typing.Dict[str, linux.build.Toolchain]:
        return {
            "generic-armv5te": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv5te/environment-setup-armv5e-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
            "generic-armv7a-hf": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv7a-hf/environment-setup-armv7ahf-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
        }

    def build(self) -> "LocalLab":
        return self


LAB = LocalLab

As you can see, this lab/build host defines two toolchains generic-armv5te and generic-armv7a-hf. You will see later how they can be used.

SSH Lab-Host as Build-Host

Make you lab-host class inherit BuildMachine as shown in the example above and define toolchains and build in a similar fashion. There isn’t much of a difference …

Build-Host is another Machine

A lot of times, you have a separate server to build your projects. tbot supports this as well. The config will look like this:

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class BuildHostSSH(linux.SSHMachine, linux.BuildMachine):
    name = "my-buildhost"
    hostname = "build.localnet"

    @property
    def workdir(self) -> "linux.Path[BuildHostSSH]":
        return linux.Workdir.athome(self, "tbot-workdir")

    @property
    def toolchains(self) -> typing.Dict[str, linux.build.Toolchain]:
        return {
            "generic-armv5te": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv5te/environment-setup-armv5e-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
            "generic-armv6": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv6/environment-setup-armv6-vfp-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
            "generic-armv7a": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv7a/environment-setup-armv7a-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
            "generic-armv7a-hf": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-armv7a-hf/environment-setup-armv7ahf-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi",
                )
            ),
            "generic-powerpc-e500v2": linux.build.EnvScriptToolchain(
                linux.Path(
                    self,
                    "/opt/yocto-2.4/generic-powerpc-e500v2/environment-setup-ppce500v2-poky-linux-gnuspe",
                )
            ),
        }


class MyLab(lab.SSHLabHost):
    name = "my-lab"
    hostname = "lab.localnet"

    @property
    def workdir(self) -> "linux.path.Path[MyLab]":
        return linux.Workdir.athome(self, "tbot-workdir")

    def build(self) -> linux.BuildMachine:
        return BuildHostSSH(self)


LAB = MyLab

For more info about configurable parameters, take a look at the BuildMachine and SSHMachine classes.

Use Build-Host in Testcases

Using the build-host is pretty straight forward:

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with tbot.acquire_lab() as lh:
    with lh.build() as bh:
        # We now have a connection to the build-host
        bh.exec0("hostname")

        # Enable a specific toolchain for our project:
        with bh.enable("generic-armv7a-hf"):
            compiler = bh.env("CC")
            tbot.log.message(f"Compiler is {compiler!r}")

            # Commands to build your code
            bh.exec0("cd", bh.workdir / "my-project")
            bh.exec0("make")

enable() is used to enable a toolchain. The toolchain must be one that is defined in your labconfig.

Building U-Boot

Because this is such a commonly needed program, tbot ships with a testcase to build U-Boot. You can call it from the commandline like this:

tbot -l mylab.py -b boards/bbb.py uboot_build -vv

For this to work, your board-config has to define a U-Boot builder:

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from tbot.tc import uboot

class BeagleBoneUBootBuilder(uboot.UBootBuilder):
    name = "bbb"
    defconfig = "am335x_evm_defconfig"
    toolchain = "generic-armv7a-hf"

class BeagleBoneUBoot(board.UBootMachine[BeagleBoneBlack]):
    prompt = "=> "
    # Instanciate the builder for your U-Boot machine
    build = BeagleBoneUBootBuilder()

UBOOT = BeagleBoneUBoot

Take a look at UBootBuilder for available options. And don’t forget setting build in your UBootMachine!