nRF51822 over the air bootloader with gcc

[Joe Merten]

For my current project, I need to compile the »over the air bootloader« with gcc (because our buildserver runs on linux, developers using Mac … no Windows and no Keil so far).

But unfortunaly, the bootloader example from the sdk (5.1) examples won't compile with gcc. It's missing gcc makefile and even there are at least 2 Keil specific files in the project (arm_startup_nrf51.s and bootloader_util_arm.c).

Could you provide support to help me on this topic?

I'd also checked:- devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/nrf51822-bootloader-with-gcc

• devzone.nordicsemi.com/index.php/the-bootloader-for-nrf51822
• github.com/hlnd/nrf51-pure-gcc-setup
• github.com/hlnd/nrf51-ble-bootloader but don't want to waste time with tinkering and try around various different approaches. I hope there was a solid and straight forward way.

[hucqym]

I am trying to build using 4.8-2014-q1-update gcc toolchain from launchpad on OSX

I am using same settings that Nikita mentions above but my linker seems to be putting the UICR and bootloader settings in the data section.

SEARCH_DIR(.)
GROUP(-lgcc -lc -lnosys)

MEMORY
{
  FLASH (rx) : ORIGIN = 0x0003B800, LENGTH = 0x4400
  bootloader_settings (rwx) : ORIGIN = 0x0003FC00, LENGTH = 0x400
  NRF_UICR_BOOT_START (rwx) : ORIGIN = 0x10001014, LENGTH = 0x4
  RAM (rwx) :  ORIGIN = 0x20002000, LENGTH = 0x2000
}


INCLUDE "gcc_nrf51_common.ld"

ENTRY(Reset_Handler)

SECTIONS
{
    .bootloader_settings_block 0x0003FC00 :
    {
        KEEP(*(.bootloader_settings_sect))
    } > bootloader_settings

    .NRF_UICR_BOOT_START_BLOCK 0x10001014 :
    {
        KEEP(*(.NRF_UICR_BOOT_START_SECT))
    } > NRF_UICR_BOOT_START

    .text : ALIGN(4)
	{
....

uint8_t __attribute__((section (".bootloader_settings_sect"))) m_boot_settings[CODE_PAGE_SIZE] __attribute__((used));
uint32_t __attribute__((section (".NRF_UICR_BOOT_START_SECT"))) m_uicr_bootloader_start_address = BOOTLOADER_REGION_START;

void StartApplication(uint32_t start_addr)
{
    __asm__ volatile (
    "LDR   R2, [R0]\n\t"                //Get App MSP.
    "MSR   MSP, R2\n\t"                 //Set the main stack pointer to the applications MSP.
    "LDR   R3, [R0, #0x00000004]\n\t"   //Get application reset vector address.
    "BX    R3\n\t"                      //No return - stack code is now activated only through SVC and plain interrupts.
    ".ALIGN"
                );
}

but here's what my bootloader.map shows

o
                0x000000002000244c                . = ALIGN (0x4)
                0x000000002000244c                __data_end__ = .

.igot.plt       0x000000002000244c        0x0 load address 0x000000000003ff7c
 .igot.plt      0x0000000000000000        0x0 /Users/huckym/software/arm-launchpad-tools-v4.8-2014-q1/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/4.8.3/armv6-m/crtbegin.o

.bootloader_settings_sect
                0x000000002000244c      0x400 load address 0x000000000003ff7c
 .bootloader_settings_sect
                0x000000002000244c      0x400 obj/bootloader_util_arm.o
                0x000000002000244c                m_boot_settings

.NRF_UICR_BOOT_START_SECT
                0x000000002000284c        0x4 load address 0x000000000004037c
 .NRF_UICR_BOOT_START_SECT
                0x000000002000284c        0x4 obj/bootloader_util_arm.o
                0x000000002000284c                m_uicr_bootloader_start_address

.bss            0x0000000020002850      0x800 load address 0x0000000000040380
                0x0000000020002850                . = ALIGN (0x4)
                0x0000000020002850                __bss_start__ = .
 *(.bss*)

Makefile.zip

project.zip

[hucqym]

Sorry for the confusion Nikita. That was my typo. It is indeed called drix-bldr.map I have attached the entire project dir after compiling/linking to the original post. It has all the build related files in bin/, build/, and obj/

Thanks Nguyen, I'll browse through your project to catch anything i might be missing but I am really hoping to get a vanilla Makefile based project instead of locking it to eclipse.