HOWTO: GP2X official SDK

I have encountered some problems setting up the GP2X official SDK on my Ubuntu machine. This is a mini-guide about how to solve them.

0.- Download the sdk.

http://dev.gp2x.com/sdk/gp2xsdk_linux.tar.gz

Unpack it and read the "readme"!

1.- Install the software you'll need.

Apt packages:

• "libc6-dev" gcc can't create executables without this.
  
• "patch" it's going to apply some patches to sources downloaded with wget.
  
• "subversion" will checkout some repositories.
  
• "g++" doesn't hurt.

2.- If you are behind a proxy, configure it.

Set env variable "ftp_proxy" pointing to it. ~/.bashrc is a good place

export ftp_proxy=proxy-ip-or-name:port

Create a "~/.subversion/servers" file containing:

[global]
http-proxy-host = proxy-ip-or-name
http-proxy-port = port

3.- You must have /bin/sh pointing to bash.

The compilation script has many bashisms. In Ubuntu the shell was recently changed to dash. Just link the shell to bash when compiling the sdk.


sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh.backup
sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh


Warning! In Ubuntu if you don't restore it to the original link after compilation, your system will boot much more slowly!


sudo rm /bin/sh
sudo mv /bin/sh.backup /bin/sh


4.- Choose the sdk location.

I you want, change the variable PREFIX in the file buildgp2xtools.sh. Default is /gp2xsdk/ you have to grant write permission on it for your user. I prefer to change it to "~/gp2xsdk" to keep it in my user home.

5.- Compile it.

Just run the buildgp2xtools.sh script. My poor 1.5 Celeron laptop took 20 min.

6.- Have fun!

The compiler is located in $PREFIX/Tools/bin/arm-gp2x-linux-gcc