esp-idf/examples/custom_bootloader/bootloader_hooks

Supported Targets	ESP32	ESP32-C2	ESP32-C3	ESP32-C6	ESP32-H2	ESP32-P4	ESP32-S2	ESP32-S3

Bootloader hooks

(See the README.md file in the upper level for more information about bootloader examples.)

The purpose of this example is to show how to add hooks to the 2nd stage bootloader.

Usage of this example:

Simply compile it:

idf.py build

Then flash it and open the monitor with the following command:

idf.py flash monitor

If everything went well, the bootloader output should be as followed:

I (24) HOOK: This hook is called BEFORE bootloader initialization
I (37) boot: [...]
[...]
I (60) HOOK: This hook is called AFTER bootloader initialization

And finally the application will start and show the message:

User application is loaded and running.

Organisation of this example

This project contains an application, in the main directory that represents a user program. It also contains a bootloader_components that, as it name states, contains a component compiled and linked with the bootloader.

Below is a short explanation of files in the project folder.

├── CMakeLists.txt
├── main
│   ├── CMakeLists.txt
│   └── main.c                 User application
├── bootloader_components
│   └── my_boot_hooks
│       ├── CMakeLists.txt   
│       └── hooks.c            Implementation of the hooks to execute on boot
└── README.md                  This is the file you are currently reading

Bootloader hooks are not supported in legacy make build system. They are only supported with CMake build system.

Note about including weak symbols

The components in ESP-IDF are compiled as static libraries. Moreover, the bootloaders' hooks are declared as weak. Thus, when defining hooks for the bootloader, we must tell the compiler to always include our library (my_boot_hooks) in the link process. To achieve this, we need to define an extra symbol: bootloader_hooks_include. In our case, this symbol is a function defined in bootloader_components/my_boot_hooks/hooks.c. This will make the linker include all the symbols contained in that file.