Getting Started/devkitARM

If your host platform is Windows then use the Windows Installer/Updater package. Otherwise you may proceed with manual installation. We are in process of putting together another cross platform installer which will make things just as easy as Windows.

The first thing that you need to do is create a folder for the devkitPro toolchains. Start by opening a terminal - on OSX use the apple key + space, then type terminal. In the terminal window type the following command to create a new folder - all these commands are executed by pressing the return key. You'll need to create the initial folder with root privileges

sudo mkdir -p /opt/devkitpro

Once you've done that you can grant world access to the folder so you can extract the archives with normal privileges.

sudo chmod 777 /opt/devkitpro

When we're done the layout for your devkitPro folder should end up like this, each folder links to the appropriate sourceforge package.

devkitpro
   |
   +-- devkitARM
   +-- examples
   |     |
   |     +-- gba
   |     +-- gp32
   |     +-- nds
   +-- libgba
   +-- libmirko
   +-- libnds

Nothing else should be placed inside these folders unless otherwise instructed by the devkitPro toolchain maintainers. On Windows several of these folders are removed and replaced by the update system.

The first package to install is the devkitARM tarball, obtained from the devkitARM link shown above. Download the appropriate tarball for your host platform - the files are named as devkitARM_<revision>-<processor>-<os>.tar.bz2. For OSX we provide universal binaries - devkitARM_<revision>-osx.tar.bz2.

Once the file is downloaded then you need to extract it into the devkitpro folder

cd /opt/devkitpro
tar -xvjf <file you downloaded>

Obviously replace <file you downloaded> with the name of the file obtained from sourceforge. On OSX you can simply drag & drop the downloaded file into the terminal window to get the file path.

Now you need to obtain the support libraries for your target platform - we'll start with the Nintendo DS libraries.

Download the latest binary of libnds then create a new folder and extract the tarball from the terminal window as before. Note: This is the file without "-src-" in the name.

mkdir libnds
cd libnds
tar -xvjf <libnds tarball>

Again, replace <libnds tarball> with the name of the file obtained from sourceforge. On OSX you can simply drag & drop the downloaded file into the terminal window to get the file path.

Now download libfat-nds, this is the libfat-nds tarball and may not be in the release at the top of the list. You may need to expand the second section to find the appropriate file. This should be extracted to the same folder as the libnds tarball earlier.

tar -xvjf <libfat-nds tarball>

Download the dswifi tarball and extract in the same place.

tar -xvjf <dswifi tarball>

Download the maxmod tarball and extract in the same place.

tar -xvjf <maxmod-nds tarball>

Download the libfilesystem tarball and extract in the same place.

tar -xvjf <libfilesystem tarball>

Lastly you'll need the arm7 binary that handles the wifi, audio and touchscreen on the DS.

Download the default arm7 tarball and extract, still inside the libnds folder.

tar -xvjf <default arm7 tarball>

Now all that remains for DS programming is the examples archive. Move back to the devkitpro folder and create an examples/nds folder.

cd ..
mkdir -p examples/nds

Grab the nds examples archive from sourceforge & extract it here.

tar -xvjf <examples tarball>

Add these variables in your execution environment, for instance, editing the .bashrc file located in your home folder:

export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro
export DEVKITARM=$DEVKITPRO/devkitARM