ESP32 Forum

HI,
I am using esp-idf since 1.0 very successfuly, so a big thanks!
I am using FreeBSD as my development environment, and so I have 2 request:
1- add -o ${uname -s) == "FreeBSD" in tools/kconifg/lxdialog/check-lxdialog.sh
2- this is more difficult/complicated:
I have to compile the crosstool-NG - it compiles ok, but the dowload source
version is not the same as that of the binary, so make complains with 'WARNING: Toolchain ...",
in any case the compiled runs just fine!
thanks,
danny

Would you mind filing this as an issue (or better, a pull request) on the ESP-IDF github repo? That way, we can track the issue and won't forget about it.

Hi,

I've just made some changes on my own to get it working on FreeBSD 11.1 + p6.

I'll try to make those changes much flexible and dependent of the OS once FreeBSD is detected + simple readme to give some clues about dependencies.

Should I fork your ESP-IDF trunk code (github) and then post my changes on my fork ?

Yes, the nicest way is indeed to fork esp-idf, make the changes, then file the changes as a pull request.

I'm wondering it there is support for ESP32 on FreeBSD 13.
Is it possible?

Pretty sure it should be possible; ESP-IDF is written to work correctly on most POSIX-y platforms. You would need to compile your own crosscompiling toolchain; I think there are instructions for that in the ESP-IDF installation manual somewhere. Do note that we do not officially support FreeBSD, so I can't guarantee that everything works, however if you run into issues I'll be happy to see if I can help you with and if there's anything in ESP-IDF stopping FreeBSD from working, we can see if we can patch that.

after downloading the latest I decided to follow the instructions install.sh and export.sh and fantastic! it works
just had to change all my Makefiles to CMakeLists.txt and some more, but idf.py works!
so now I can continue using Freebsd 13.0.

Good to hear, thanks for reporting back!

Hello forum.
I also intend to use ESP-IDF to work on some ESP32 projects utilizing FreeBSD (CURRENT, 14-STABLE and 13-STABLE as of today), without Linuxulator!
With the toolchain pkg patches provided by Tomoyuki Sakurai [http://info.mkrsgh.org/blog/makerspace/ ... n-FreeBSD/ ] one is able to install a proper and recent toolchain in a standard FreeBSD ports path. After compiling the ports provided by Tomoyuki Sakurai, the FreeBSD environment provides the toolchain for IDF v5.1.1 (set via proper FLAVOR) :

/usr/local/xtensa-esp32-elf-idf51/ (basic toolchain, gcc v12.2)
/usr/local/esp-gdb-xtensa/ (ELF gdb, v12.1)

Following the instructions getting IDF v5.1.1, recen git pull is situated at

~/esp/esp-idf51/

Before altering IDF_PATH globally, running

~/esp/esp-idf51/install.sh

will pull a lot of (and most of them most likely unnecessary) Linux binaries and tries to install Python in ~/.espressif which bails out due to conflicts with standard FreeBSD packages already installed. So far, I ignored most of the errors, but it seems that some Python libraries/packages are missing, but I'll come to that later.
Pulling/installing these Linux binaries will also provide my with

~/.espressif/tools/esp-rom-elfs/

binaries, which I consider important.

After install.sh quit, IDF_PATH is set to

IDF_PATH=~/esp/esp-idf51/

and

IDF_TOOLS_PATH=~/esp/esp-idf51/tools

and running "${IDF_PATH}/tools/idf_tools.py" install-python-env.

This is now my starting point - and I fail!

Running ${IDF_PATH}/export.sh still bails out on two (mutually) important toolchain members:

[...]
Detecting the Python interpreter
Checking "python3" ...
Python 3.9.18
"python3" has been detected
Checking Python compatibility
Checking other ESP-IDF version.
ERROR: tool xtensa-esp-elf-gdb has no installed versions. Please run '/usr/local/bin/python3 ... tools/idf_tools.py install' to install it
[ along with some notes about unwanted ESP32XX types]
ERROR: tool esp32ulp-elf has no installed versions. Please run '/usr/local/bin/python3 ...
An unsupported version of tool esp32ulp-elf was found in PATH: 2.28.51 ...
[...]
ERROR: tool openocd-esp32 has no installed versions. Please run '/usr/local/bin/python3 ...
An unsupported version of tool openocd-esp32 was found in PATH: 0.11.0. To use it, run '/usr/local/bin/python3 ...
ERROR: tool esp-rom-elfs has no installed versions. Please run '/usr/local/bin/python3 ...
[...]

Running the suggested script

tools/idf_tools.py export --prefer-system

results in
[...]
ERROR: tool xtensa-esp-elf-gdb has no installed versions. Please run ...
...
WARNING: using an unsupported version of tool esp-clang found in PATH: unknown
WARNING: using an unsupported version of tool esp32ulp-elf found in PATH: 2.28.51
WARNING: using an unsupported version of tool cmake found in PATH: 3.27.7
WARNING: using an unsupported version of tool openocd-esp32 found in PATH: 0.11.0
WARNING: using an unsupported version of tool ninja found in PATH: 1.11.1
ERROR: tool esp-rom-elfs has no installed versions. Please run '/usr/local/bin/python3
export IDF_PYTHON_ENV_PATH="~/esp/esp-idf51/tools/python_env/idf5.1_py3.9_env";...
[...]

The first question is: how do I provide the proper environment variables to make the IDF scripts find

1) xtensa-esp-elf-gdb (located at /usr/local/esp-gdb-xtensa/bin/xtensa-esp32-elf-gd)
2) esp-rom-elfs (located at .espressif/tools/esp-rom-elfs/

As one can see, things do not run very well for me here. I'm sorry if my description of failure is to "longish", but I hope someone will discover my major mistake.

Since FreeBSD isn't officially supported, I aim for some workarounds setting up the environment manually as the script would do this task in a more automatica fashion, but this seems to be a mission impossible without further informations about the hierachy of variables requisite to sucessfully setup the IDF's environment.

Running idf.py at the status quo described above as suggested with "hello_world" bails out with

Please use idf.py only in an ESP-IDF shell environment.

which seems to indicate missing Python packages and/or a proper path to the IDF location where these packages might reside.

I'm not even getting close to a point from which a descent developer might catch attention to real problems.

Is it possible to completely avoid/circumvent the Python scripts and setup manually an environment?

Usually I use ANJUTA as my favorite IDE, so that might be a suitabel task to provide a working setup ...

Thanks for reading ...

I am using IDF 5.1 on FreeBSD 15-CURRENT.
idf.py build/flash/monitor works. also fails on my system but It seems that I don't need it.

I also use port that you mentioned to build GCC.
I have my IDF tools in path: When I first installed it I did these steps (you'll possibly need to install more python tools, I had some installed): I did try and fail to use LLVM (from system, ports and from ESP) to build and run examples. I also tried and failed to compile ESP's LLVM on FreeBSD.
But official GCC toolchain works for examples for my ESP32-C3.

To build example: To flash it use on of: