Installing on Linux

To get started with micro:bit v2, depending on your distibution of Linux, there are different options available. If you are on a Debian-based distribution or Void Linux (i.e, your distribution has either the apt or xbps package manager), then you can use the micro-tools script-assisted setup method, which will allow you to set up the SDK for building and creating micro:bit v2 projects with a single command. If you are on another distribution, then you will have to follow the manual method for setting up the build environment.

Script-assisted Setup

For automatic setup, we will use microinstall.sh from the c272/micro-tools repository. This repository contains many useful tools for building and configuring build environments for micro:bit v2 projects, and is a companion project to this documentation. To install the build environment, all we have to do is clone the repository somewhere that has user execute permissions, and execute the install script. You will need sudo permissions for some parts of the install process.

git clone https://github.com/c272/micro-tools.git
cd micro-tools/
./microinstall.sh

Once the install process has completed, if you wish to add the micro-tools commands to your PATH so they are accessible through the command line, copy the provided source command into your terminal’s startup file (for bash, this may be ~/.bashrc). After this, you are finished and ready to build micro:bit v2 projects! See the ‘Configuring & Using micro-tools’ page for more information on how to create and build projects.

Manual Setup

To manually install the micro:bit v2 build environment, you should first clone the sample repository provided by the CODAL API maintainers. This will allow you to configure the build environment and setup for compiling micro:bit programs.

git clone https://github.com/lancaster-university/microbit-v2-samples microbit-v2/
cd microbit-v2/

Once this is done, you will also have to install several prerequisite dependencies in order to begin building and using the micro:bit API. The dependencies are as follows:

• GCC
• Python 3
• CMake
• GCC ARM EABI
• GCC ARM binutils
• GCC ARM newlib
• GCC ARM libstdc++

If you are on a Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu or Void Linux, the relevant commands to install all dependencies can be found below. If not, you will have to consult your distribution’s relevant package repository to find the correct package names.

sudo apt install gcc python3 cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi binutils-arm-none-eabi

sudo xbps-install -Su python3 cmake cross-arm-none-eabi cross-arm-none-eabi-gcc \
    cross-arm-none-eabi-binutils cross-arm-none-eabi-newlib \
    cross-arm-none-eabi-libstdc++

Once these are installed, you should be able to begin building micro:bit v2 projects! Run python3 build.py from within the microbit-v2 directory to build the initial ‘Hello World’ project, and you should see a MICROBIT.HEX file be outputted to the same location. With this current manual setup, however, you are limited to writing and running source code from within the microbit-v2/source directory only. For information on setting up micro-tools to help with building anywhere on the system, see the ‘Configuring & Using micro-tools’ guide.