Quickly build and run your first app

Requirements

If you don't have it already, grab the latest version of the SDK at https://www.sifteo.com/developers

Installation

The Sifteo SDK is distributed as a zip archive, and can be unpacked anywhere on your machine.

It is recommended to unpack the SDK archive to a path with no spaces in the name - make is used as the default build tool, which does not handle paths with spaces very well.

What's Inside?

arm-clang is a C/C++ compiler for Sifteo games
slinky is an optimizing linker/code generator for the Sifteo platform
stir is an asset preparation tool that converts your visual and audio assets into the compact formats used on Sifteo Cubes
siftulator is an emulator that allows you to run and test your applications in simulation before running them on hardware
doc contains a copy of the SDK documentation
include contains the SDK headers
examples contains a variety of example projects
sifteo-sdk-shell is a shortcut which starts a new shell with the right environment variables for compiling Sifteo applications with this SDK

The Sifteo SDK doesn't dictate any build tools or IDE that must be used to develop applications. This guide, as well as the examples included with the SDK, will assume you're building with good old Makefiles, but you may configure your IDE of choice to build Sifteo applications as long as it can use the compiler and linker we provide.

Build & Run

Now we'll build and run stars, one of the example applications in the SDK.

First, ensure your SDK is on a path with no spaces in the name, otherwise make will report errors.

Now, open the appropriate shell, depending on your platform:

Windows: double click sifteo-sdk-shell.cmd
Mac OS X: double click sifteo-sdk-shell.command
Linux: run sifteo-sdk-shell.sh

The shell opens to the sdk/examples folder within the SDK distribution. From here, navigate into the stars demo, and run make to build the project.

cd stars
make

This should create stars.elf in the current folder - this is the binary that contains the stars application.

Note: The name of the .elf file is specified by the line APP = stars in the Makefile in the stars folder.

Finally, let's run stars.elf in the Siftulator.

siftulator stars.elf

The simulator should start up and run stars, which should look like the following:

Congratulations! You've just run your first Sifteo Cubes application. Try building the other examples in the examples folder, and modifying them to expore the API.

You may also use any of the examples as a template to create an application of your own.

Copy the entire folder of your example of choice to a new location.
Rename the folder, and edit the Makefile to reference your project's new name and source files.
run make to confirm that your new project builds, and run it in the Siftulator

Other Build Environments

Note

If you set up your own build system from scratch, be sure to use the same compiler flags that we provide by default in the Makefiles.

Compile for a minimal environment, and generate LLVM object files:
```
-emit-llvm -ffreestanding -nostdinc -msoft-float
```

Disable unavailable C++ features:

-fno-exceptions -fno-threadsafe-statics -fno-rtti -fno-stack-protector

Recommended flags for warnings and debugging:

-g -Wall -Werror -Wno-unused -Wno-gnu -Wno-c++11-extensions