Standard Setup of Toolchain for Linux

Install Prerequisites

To compile with ESP8266_RTOS_SDK you need to get the following packages:

  • CentOS 7:

    sudo yum install gcc git wget make ncurses-devel flex bison gperf python pyserial

  • Ubuntu and Debian:

    sudo apt-get install gcc git wget make libncurses-dev flex bison gperf python python-serial

  • Arch:

    sudo pacman -S --needed gcc git make ncurses flex bison gperf python2-pyserial

Toolchain Setup

ESP8266 toolchain for Linux is available for download from Espressif website:

  1. Download this file, then extract it in ~/esp directory:

    mkdir -p ~/esp
cd ~/esp
tar -xzf ~/Downloads/xtensa-lx106-elf-linux64-1.22.0-100-ge567ec7-5.2.0.tar.gz

  1. The toolchain will be extracted into ~/esp/xtensa-lx106-elf/ directory.

    To use it, you will need to update your PATH environment variable in ~/.profile file. To make xtensa-lx106-elf available for all terminal sessions, add the following line to your ~/.profile file:

    export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/esp/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin"

    Alternatively, you may create an alias for the above command. This way you can get the toolchain only when you need it. To do this, add different line to your ~/.profile file:

    alias get_lx106='export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/esp/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin"'

    Then when you need the toolchain you can type get_lx106 on the command line and the toolchain will be added to your PATH.

    Note

    If you have /bin/bash set as login shell, and both .bash_profile and .profile exist, then update .bash_profile instead.

  2. Log off and log in back to make the .profile changes effective. Run the following command to verify if PATH is correctly set:

    printenv PATH

    You are looking for similar result containing toolchain’s path at the end of displayed string:

    $ printenv PATH
/home/user-name/bin:/home/user-name/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin:/home/user-name/esp/xtense-lx106-elf/bin

    Instead of /home/user-name there should be a home path specific to your installation.

Permission issues /dev/ttyUSB0

With some Linux distributions you may get the Failed to open port /dev/ttyUSB0 error message when flashing the ESP8266.

If this happens you may need to add your current user to the correct group (commonly “dialout”) which has the appropriate permissions:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

In addition, you can also use “sudo chmod” to set permissions on the “/dev/ttyUSB0” file before running the make command to resolve:

sudo chmod -R 777 /dev/ttyUSB0

Next Steps

To carry on with development environment setup, proceed to section Get ESP8266_RTOS_SDK.