Template: Setup C/C++ Environment for Pico

You can program the Pico with Raspberry Pi or Windows PC.
You can directly refer to the Offical manual of Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi

• Please make sure that you use the Newest Raspberry Pi OS and the Pi 4 is recommended.

Pico SDK

• Open the terminal of the Raspberry Pi
• Run the following commands to get the SDK

cd ~/
mkdir pico
cd pico
git clone -b master https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk.git
cd pico-sdk
git submodule update --init

• Install the ToolChain

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi build-essential

• [Optional] If you want to update the SDK, you can run the following commands:

cd ~/pico/pico-sdk
git pull
git submodule update

Pico Examples

Here we use the pico-examples of Raspberry Pi for examples

• Download the examples

cd ~/pico
git clone -b master https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples.git

• Create build directory for Blink example

cd ~/pico/pico-examples
mkdir build
cd build

• Set the PICO_SDK_PATH
  • Note that the path of the SDK maybe different according to the directory you saved
  • If you follow this guide step by step, the relative path of the SDK should be ../../pico-sdk and the absolute path should be ~/pico/pico-sdk
  • If you change the path of the sdk, please use the correct path

export PICO_SDK_PATH=../../pico-sdk

• Build the example

cmake ..
make -j4

• After building, a .uf2 file and a .elf file are generated
• Press and hold the BOOTSEL button of the pico and connect it to Raspberry Pi by USB cable
• A portable disk RPI-RP2 is recognized, copy the .uf2 file to the RPi-RP2
• Pico will reboot and run the codes.