Setting up the waf Build Environment on Windows using Cygwin

These setup instructions describe how to setup Cygwin on so that waf (the build system) can run natively on windows and build for all supported boards.

Note

There is a pre-built script at /ardupilot/Tools/environment_install/install-prereqs-windows.ps1 that will automatically perform all of the below steps.

Install Cygwin

1. Open a web browser to www.cygwin.com/install.html and download “setup-x86_64.exe”
2. Paste the following command at a DOS prompt (press window and R key then enter cmd) in the directory where you downloaded “Run setup-x86_64.exe”

setup-x86_64.exe -P autoconf,automake,ccache,gcc-g++,git,libtool,make,gawk,libexpat-devel,libxml2-devel,python27,python2-future,python27-libxml2,python27-pip,libxslt-devel,python27-devel,procps-ng,zip,gdb,ddd

Or, for a stepped install:

1. open a web browser to www.cygwin.com/install.html and run setup-x86_64.exe”

2. accept the all the prompts (including default file locations) until you reach the Select Packages dialog.

3. Select the required packages from the thousands of available packages. Refer to the list below and enter each package “Name” into the Search field as shown below. When you have found the package click on the Skip button to change it to a version number and then move onto the next package:

   

   Cygwin Installer: Select Package Dialog

   Package Name	Category / Name / Description
   autoconf	Devel | autoconf: Wrapper scripts for autoconf commands
   automake	Devel | automake: Wrapper scripts for automake and aclocal
   ccache	Devel | ccache: A C compiler cache for improving recompilation
   gcc-g++	Devel | gcc-g++ GNU Compiler Collection (C++)
   git	Devel | git: Distributed version control system
   libtool	Devel | libtool: Generic library support script
   make	Devel | make: The GNU version of the ‘make’ utility
   gawk	Interpreters | gawk: GNU awk, a pattern scanning and processing language
   libexpat-devel	Libs | libexpat-devel: Expat XML parser library (development files)
   libxml2-devel	Libs | libxml2-devel: Gnome XML library (development)
   libxslt-devel	Libs | libxslt-devel: XML template library (development files)
   python27	Python | python27: Python2 language interpreter
   python27-devel	Python | python27-devel: Python2 language interpreter
   python2-future	Python | python2-future: Clean single-source support for Python 3 and 2
   python27-libxml2	Python | python27-libxml2: Gnome XML Library (Python bindings)
   python27-pip	Python | python27-pip: Python package installation tool
   procps-ng	System | procps-ng: System and process monitoring utilities (required for pkill)
   gdb	Devel | gdb: The GNU Debugger
   ddd	Devel | ddd: DDD, the data display debugger
   zip	Archive | zip: Info-ZIP compression utility

4. When all the packages are selected, click through the rest of the prompts and accept all other default options (including the additional dependencies).

5. Select Finish to start downloading and installing the packages.

   Warning

   Sometimes the installation can stall because of anti-virus protection software is running. If this occurs, shutdown all other programs on your PC including the anti-virus protection and try again.

Install the GCC compiler

Note

This step is only required if you intend to compile for ARM-based boards.

• download and install the gcc-arm-non-eabi compiler from firmware.ardupilot.org/Tools/STM32-tools (quick link is here)

  • accept the license
  • install to the default location
  • accept the ssl certificate
  • check option to “Add path to environment variable”

Install MAVProxy

The MAVProxy GCS is required when running SITL. If you’re not planning to run SITL, you can skip this step.

1. To install MAVProxy on Windows follow the MAVProxy’s install instructions for Windows

Set up directories/paths and extra packages in Cygwin

1. open and then close the “Cygwin64 Terminal” application from the desktop or start menu icon. This creates initialisation files for the user in the Cygwin home directory.
2. open the “Cygwin64 Terminal” application from the desktop or start menu icon. Enter the following command to install additional Python packages:

pip2 install empy pyserial pymavlink

Download ArduPilot Source

The ArduPilot source files then need to be downloaded to your local Cygwin filesystem by cloning the git repository and updating the submodules. Enter the following commands into the Cygwin terminal to download the source files:

git clone https://github.com/ardupilot/ardupilot.git
cd ardupilot
git submodule update --init --recursive

Build with Waf

You should now be able to start the “Cygwin64 Terminal” application from your Windows Start menu and build with waf as described in BUILD.md.

Warning

The build may fail if the file path to some files is too long. If the build fails, please try cloning ArduPilot into a directory very high in the directory structure (i.e. ~/ardupilot).

If during build process you get error of missing packet xyz, re-check that you have installed all cygwin packages listed above