Build Cmocka for Xtensa

Cmocka for SOF is built automatically by default, however you may need a prebuilt version that can be used with CMOCKA_DIRECTORY.

This article exaplains how to build Cmocka manually. Please note that it currently works only for Xtensa xt-* toolchain. Xtensa GCC toolchain is not supported yet.

Cmocka fork

We use our Cmocka fork that adds some options for embedded compilers:

WITH_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE

Some compilers cannot compile CMake’s test program with PIC, so you can disable it with this option.

WITH_TINY_CONFIG

Usually compiler checks are cheap, so configuration is quick. However many compilers are expensive to call, so this option can be used to minimize checks count.

WITH_SHARED_LIB

For compilers that cannot build shared libs and still want to use make / make install for making prebuilt libs

All changes made to Cmocka are enabled with these options, without them it works just like vanilla Cmocka.

Clone repo and enter its directory, because all examples will be executed there:

git clone https://github.com/thesofproject/cmocka
cd cmocka

Simple build on Linux

On any system that CMake identifies as UNIX, you can just call following commands and it should work:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake \
   -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=xt-xcc \
   -DWITH_STATIC_LIB=ON \
   -DWITH_SHARED_LIB=OFF \
   -DWITH_EXAMPLES=OFF \
   -DWITH_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE=OFF \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=install \
   ..
make install

Arguments used:

CMAKE_C_COMPILER

We specify “xt-xcc” as compiler that CMake should use to compile C files.

WITH_STATIC_LIB

By default static lib for Cmocka is not built, so we enable it.

WITH_SHARED_LIB

By default Cmocka builds shared lib, but we don’t want that.

WITH_EXAMPLES

Examples don’t work without shared lib, so we disable them.

WITH_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE

PIC will make CMake’s testing programs to fail, so disable it.

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX

By default, it will go to host system binary files (for example /usr/bin), we change it to “install”, so make install, will place output to build/install directory. This is the directory that you can use as input for CMOCKA_DIRECTORY in SOF build system.

Cross-platform build

In order to build Cmocka for generic system, you need to use CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE.

Create xt-toolchain-for-cmocka.cmake file with following contents:

# Generic because we build for embedded system
set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Generic)
# It should be always set when CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME is changed
set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION 1)

# Make CMake use "xt-xcc" for compiling C files
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER xt-xcc)
# Override ar and ranlib tools that CMake should use for linking lib
set(CMAKE_AR xt-ar CACHE STRING "")
set(CMAKE_RANLIB     xt-ranlib CACHE STRING "")

# Cmocka is written in C99, but for some reason it sets this flag, only on Posix
# We set up it here, because our system is Generic
add_definitions("-std=gnu99")

Now you can build Cmocka using file above (use correct path to your toolchain file):

mkdir build && cd build
cmake \
   -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/path/to/xt-toolchain-for-cmocka.cmake \
   -DWITH_STATIC_LIB=ON \
   -DWITH_SHARED_LIB=OFF \
   -DWITH_EXAMPLES=OFF \
   -DWITH_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE=OFF \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=install \
   ..
make install

After these commands are successfully completed, the Cmocka’s static lib and headers should be in build/install.

Please note that commands above were for CMake’s Make generator. If you are using Windows and want to use Ninja, your commands will look more like:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake \
   -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/path/to/xt-toolchain-for-cmocka.cmake \
   -DWITH_STATIC_LIB=ON \
   -DWITH_SHARED_LIB=OFF \
   -DWITH_EXAMPLES=OFF \
   -DWITH_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE=OFF \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=install \
   -GNinja \
   ..
ninja install

Note

You can use -DWITH_TINY_CONFIG=ON, if configuration step takes too much time.