pimoroni-pico/setting-up-the-pico-sdk.md

Setting up the Pico SDK

If you want to make the installation as simple as possible just follow the steps below (you can simply cut and paste these commands into your terminal):

Step 1. Create a new directory in your home directory to keep everything tidily in one place:

cd ~
mkdir pico
cd pico

Step 2. Install the Pico SDK and examples:

git clone -b master https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk.git

# Set the PICO_SDK_PATH environment variable to where you just cloned the repo.
export PICO_SDK_PATH=/path/to/pico-sdk

cd pico-sdk
git submodule update --init
cd ..
git clone -b master https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples.git

Step 3. Install the toolchain needed to build Pico projects.

Debian Linux

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi build-essential

macos (Using Homebrew)

# Install cmake
brew install cmake

# Install the arm eabi toolchain
brew install --cask gcc-arm-embedded

# The equivalent to build-essential on linux, you probably already have this.
xcode-select --install

Step 4. Install the MicroPython port (optional):

git clone -b master https://github.com/micropython/micropython.git
cd micropython
git submodule update --init -- lib/pico-sdk lib/tinyusb
make -C mpy-cross
cd ports/rp2
make
cd ../../../

Step 5. Install the Pimoroni Pico libraries:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico.git
cd pimoroni-pico
git submodule update --init
mkdir build

And you're done. Everything is installed and ready to go.

A good place to start is to build our examples which will prove that everything is setup correctly. Our project is setup to mimic the approach that Raspberry Pi have taken so if you're familiar with building their examples this should be a familiar process.

cd build
cmake ..
make

When the make command has completed you'll see that a number of new files and directories have appeared in your build directory. For the purpose of building our examples the one that matters is the examples directory.

Inside examples will be one directory per product, each of which contain at least one .uf2 file that can be flashed directly onto your Pico.