Published: Mon 02 June 2025
By Nicholas Dietz
In Software .
A call for help.
A mastodon user calls for help.
https://mastodon.social/@PaulaMaddox/114609318930864994
I accept
I ask for more details.
They reply
The details are clear, concise, and surprisingly self-aware. This is going great!
I help
I produce the requested file.
neov32_raw_exe.bin
How'd I do it?
a very truthful history.txt
The key thing I needed to learn was that the tools needed to be installed by a tool called xpm. The documentation for this is actually pretty good and lists the exact steps and commands needed. However it's also very verbose. A hello-world style tutorial would be more appropriate as a true starting point.
The gist of it:
get the neorv32 repo
install xpm
install the toolchain using xpm
initialize the neorv32 directory with xpm
modify the path so the toolchain can be found
change to the blink example directory.
run make bin to produce the output
The truth
But that's not how I did it. I went about it the other way.
I changed to the blink example directory.
I saw a makefile so I ran make.
I saw the makefile error was complaining about not finding riscv-none-elf-gcc so I downloaded that.
I then looked at the documentation for that to see how to install it.
That required xpm so I installed that.
Fortunately the install instructions are good, and also listed that it required running an init command and modifying the path, so I did that as well.
Then I went back and ran make and it worked.
How long did it take?
About 20 minutes, not counting writing the blog post.
How much would I charge.
Free of course!
Alternatively, you could just round up my usual rate up to the nearest thousand:
20 min * 1hr/60min * $1000/hr = $333.33
That might cover health insurance costs in the US, lawyers, marketing, sales, tariffs, inflation, etc.
Other resources consulted
The initial links provided:
https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32/tree/main/sw/example/demo_blink_led
https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/riscv-none-elf-gcc-xpack/releases/download/v14.2.0-3/xpack-riscv-none-elf-gcc-14.2.0-3-win32-x64.zip
This second one was for windows, so I just used it as a starting point to find the linux equivalent.
Additional web searches done:
None! The initial links seemed to lead the way nicely.
Other links followed:
https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32/blob/main/sw/example/demo_blink_led/makefile
https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32/tree/main/sw/example/demo_blink_led
https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32
https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/riscv-none-elf-gcc-xpack/releases/
https://xpack.github.io/riscv-none-elf-gcc/releases/
https://xpack.github.io/docs/getting-started/
https://xpack-dev-tools.github.io/
https://xpack-dev-tools.github.io/riscv-none-elf-gcc-xpack/
https://xpack-dev-tools.github.io/riscv-none-elf-gcc-xpack/docs/getting-started/
https://xpack-dev-tools.github.io/riscv-none-elf-gcc-xpack/docs/install/