Bloom

** First Beta release to be published by end of April 2021 **

Bloom is a debug interface for embedded systems development on Linux. This is the official repository for Bloom's source code. For information on how to use Bloom, please visit https://bloom.oscillate.io.

Bloom implements a number of user-space device drivers, enabling support for many debug tools (such as the Atmel-ICE, the Power Debugger and the MPLAB SNAP). Bloom exposes an interface to the connected target, via a GDB RSP server. This allows any IDE with GDB RSP client capabilities to interface with Bloom and gain full access to the target.

Currently, Bloom only supports AVR8 targets from Microchip. Bloom was designed to accommodate targets from different families and architectures. Support for other target families will be considered as and when requested.

License

Bloom is released under the LGPLv3 license. See LICENSE.txt

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Bloom Architecture

Bloom is a multithreaded event-driven program written in C++. It consists of four components:

• TargetController
• DebugServer
• Insight
• SignalHandler

TargetController

The TargetController possesses full control of the connected debug tool and target. Execution of user-space device drivers takes place here. All interaction with the connected hardware goes through the TargetController. It exposes an interface to the connected hardware via events. The TargetController runs on a dedicated thread. See source code in src/TargetController/ for more.

DebugServer

The DebugServer exposes an interface to the connected target, for third-party programs such as IDEs. Currently, Bloom only supports one DebugServer - the GDB RSP server. With this server, any IDE with GDB RSP support can interface with Bloom and thus the connected target. The DebugServer runs on a dedicated thread. See source code in src/DebugServer/ for more.

Insight

Insight is a graphical user interface that provides insight of the target's GPIO pin states. It also enables GPIO pin manipulation. Insight occupies Bloom's main thread and employs a single worker thread for background tasks. Unlike other components within Bloom, Insight relies heavily on the Qt framework for its GUI capabilities and other useful utilities. See source code in src/Insight/ for more.

SignalHandler

The SignalHandler is responsible for handling any UNIX signals issued to Bloom. It runs on a dedicated thread. All other threads within Bloom do not accept any UNIX signals. See source code in src/SignalHandler/ for more.

Inter-component communication

The components described above interact with each other using an event-based mechanism. More on this to follow.

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Compiling Bloom

To compile Bloom, the following dependencies must be resolved. The accompanying installation commands will only work on distros with apt-get support.

CMake version 3.10 or later:

This can be installed via sudo apt-get install cmake, provided the appropriate version is available in your OS package repositories. Otherwise, you'll need to download CMake from the official website.

G++9 or later

Bloom uses features that are only available in C++20. G++9 is (likely) the minimum version Bloom will compile with. Also, build-essential (sudo apt-get install build-essential).

libusb v1.0 & libhidapi

sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev libhidapi-dev

PHP version 8 or later, with the xml extension

Some of Bloom's build scripts are written in PHP.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get install php8.0-cli php8.0-xml

Qt Version 5.12.10 or later

It's best to install this via the Qt installer: https://www.qt.io/download

You may also need to install mesa-common-dev and libglu1-mesa-dev (Qt dependencies): sudo apt install mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev

Notes on compiling:

• If CMake fails to find the Qt packages, you may need to tell it where to look: export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/Qt-installation/5.12.10/gcc_64/
• Use the build directory build/cmake-build-debug, when generating the build system for the debug build as it's already gitingored. (You'll have to create it)
• Use the build directory build/cmake-build-release, when generating the build system for the release build as it's already gitingored. (You'll have to create it)
• To generate the build system with cmake (for debug build)

  # For release build, change cmake-build-debug to cmake-build-release and -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug to -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
  # You may also need to change the path to the compiler
  # You may also need to supply an absolute path to the source (cmake gets a bit weird about this, sometimes)
  cd /path/to/Bloom/build/cmake-build-debug/;
  cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/g++-9 ./;
  

• To build Bloom (debug):

  cd /path/to/Bloom;
  cmake --build ./build/cmake-build-debug --target Bloom;
  

• To run the clean target Bloom (debug):

  cd /path/to/Bloom;
  cmake --build ./build/cmake-build-debug --target clean;
  

More documentation to follow.