This is the fourth post in our Zero to main() series, where we worked methodically to demystify what happens to firmware before the main() function is called. So far, we bootstrapped a C environment, wrote a linker script from scratch, and implemented our own bootloader.

And yet, we cannot even write a hello world program! Consider the following main.c file:

#include <stdio.h> int main () { printf ( "Hello, World

" ); while ( 1 ) {} }

Compiling this using our Makefile and linker script from previous posts, we hit the following error:

$ make ... Linking build/minimal.elf arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: build/objs/a/b/c/minimal.o: in function ` main ': /minimal/minimal.c:4: undefined reference to `printf' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [ build/minimal.elf] Error 1

Undefined reference to printf ! How could this be? Our firmware’s C environment is still missing a key component: a working C standard library. This means that commonly used functions such as printf , memcpy , or strncpy are all out of reach of our program so far.

In firmware-land, nothing comes free with the system: just like we had to explicitly zero out the bss region to initialize some of our static variables, we’ll have to port a printf implementation alongside a C standard library if we want to use it.

In this post, we will add RedHat’s Newlib to our firmware and highlight some of its features. We will implement syscalls, learn about constructors, and finally print out “Hello, World”! We will also learn how to replace parts or all of the standard C library.

Setup

As we did in our previous posts, we are using Adafruit’s Metro M0 development board to run our examples. We use a cheap CMSIS-DAP adapter and openOCD to program it.

You can find a step by step guide in our previous post.

As with previous examples, we start with our “minimal” example which you can find on GitHub. I’ve reproduced the source code for main.c below:

#include <samd21g18a.h> #include <port.h> #include <string.h> #define LED_0_PIN PIN_PA17 static void set_output ( const uint8_t pin ) { struct port_config config_port_pin ; port_get_config_defaults ( & config_port_pin ); config_port_pin . direction = PORT_PIN_DIR_OUTPUT ; port_pin_set_config ( pin , & config_port_pin ); port_pin_set_output_level ( pin , false ); } int main () { memcpy ( NULL , NULL , 0 ); set_output ( LED_0_PIN ); while ( true ) { port_pin_toggle_output_level ( LED_0_PIN ); for ( int i = 0 ; i < 100000 ; ++ i ) {} } }

Implementing Newlib

Why Newlib?

There are several implementations of the C Standard Library, starting with the venerable glibc found on most GNU/Linux systems. Alternative implementations include Musl libc, Bionic libc, ucLibc, and dietlibc.

Newlib is an implementation of the C Standard Library targeted at bare-metal embedded systems that is maintained by RedHat. It has become the de-facto standard in embedded software because it is complete, has optimizations for a wide range of architectures, and produces relatively small code.

Today Newlib is bundled alongside toolchains and SDK provided by vendors such as ARM ( arm-none-eabi-gcc ) and Espressif (ESP-IDF for ESP32).

Note: when code-size constrained, you may choose to use a variant of newlib, called newlib-nano, which does away with some C99 features, and some printf bells and whistles to deliver a more compact standard library. Newlib-nano is enabled with the —specs=nano.specs CFLAG. You can read more about it in our code size blog post

Enabling Newlib

Newlib is enabled by default when you build a project with arm-none-eabi-gcc . Indeed, you must explicitly opt-out with -nostdlib if you prefer to build your firmware without it.

This is what we do for our “minimal” example, to guarantee we do not include any libc functionality by mistake.

PROJECT := minimal BUILD_DIR ?= build CFLAGS += -nostdlib SRCS = \ startup_samd21.c \ $(PROJECT) .c include ../common-standalone.mk

It is very easy to add a dependency on the C standard library without meaning to, as GCC will sometimes use standard C functions implicitly. For example, consider this code used to zero-initialize a struct:

int main () { int b [ 50 ] = { 0 }; // zero initialize a struct /* ... */ }

We added no new #include , nor any call to C library functions. Yet if we compile this code with -nostdlib , we’ll get the following error:

... Linking build/minimal.elf /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: build/objs/a/b/c/minimal.o: in function ` main ': /minimal/minimal.c:16: undefined reference to `memset' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make: *** [ build/minimal.elf] Error 1

If we remove -nostdlib , the program compiles and link without problems.

Linking build/minimal.elf arm-none-eabi-objdump -D build/minimal.elf > build/minimal.lst arm-none-eabi-objcopy build/minimal.elf build/minimal.bin -O binary arm-none-eabi-size build/minimal.elf text data bss dec hex filename 1292 0 8192 9484 250c build/minimal.elf

So here we are, using Newlib, and we did not have to do anything. Could it really be this simple?

Note: the variant of Newlib bundled with arm-none-eabi-gcc is not compiled with -g , which can make debugging difficult. For that reason, you may chose to replace it with your own build of Newlib. You can read more about that process in the Implementing our own C standard library section of this article.

System Calls

Not so fast! Let’s go back to our “Hello World” example:

int main () { printf ( "Hello World!

" ); while ( 1 ) {} }

Removing -nostdlib is not quite enough. Instead of printf being undefined, we now see a whole mess of undefined symbols:

Linking build/minimal.elf /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-sbrkr.o ) : in function ` _sbrk_r ': sbrkr.c:(.text._sbrk_r+0xc): undefined reference to `_sbrk' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-writer.o ) : in function ` _write_r ': writer.c:(.text._write_r+0x10): undefined reference to `_write' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-closer.o ) : in function ` _close_r ': closer.c:(.text._close_r+0xc): undefined reference to `_close' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-lseekr.o ) : in function ` _lseek_r ': lseekr.c:(.text._lseek_r+0x10): undefined reference to `_lseek' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-readr.o ) : in function ` _read_r ': readr.c:(.text._read_r+0x10): undefined reference to `_read' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-fstatr.o ) : in function ` _fstat_r ': fstatr.c:(.text._fstat_r+0xe): undefined reference to `_fstat' /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: /usr/local/Cellar/arm-none-eabi-gcc/8-2018-q4-major/gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/8.2.1/../../../../arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb/v6-m/nofp/libg_nano. a ( lib_a-isattyr.o ) : in function ` _isatty_r ': isattyr.c:(.text._isatty_r+0xc): undefined reference to `_isatty' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Specifically, the compiler is asking for _fstat , _read , _lseek , _close , _write , and _sbrk .

The newlib documentation calls these functions “system calls”. In short, they are the handful of things newlib expects the underlying “operating system”. The complete list of them is provided below:

_exit, close, environ, execve, fork, fstat, getpid, isatty, kill, link, lseek, open, read, sbrk, stat, times, unlink, wait, write

You’ll notice that several of the syscalls relate to filesystem operation or process control. These do not make much sense in a firmware context, so we’ll often simply provide a stub that returns an error code.

Let’s look at the ones our “Hello, World” example requires.

fstat

fstat returns the status of an open file. The minimal version of this should identify all files as character special devices. This forces one-byte-read at a time.

#include <sys/stat.h> int fstat ( int file , struct stat * st ) { st -> st_mode = S_IFCHR ; return 0 ; }

lseek

lseek repositions the file offset of the open file associated with the file descriptor fd to the argument offset according to the directive whence .

Here we can simply return 0, which implies the file is empty.

int lseek ( int file , int offset , int whence ) { return 0 ; }

close

close closes a file descriptor fd .

Since no file should have gotten open -ed, we can just return an error on close:

int close ( int fd ) { return - 1 ; }

write

This is where things get interesting! write writes up to count bytes from the buffer starting at buf to the file referred to by the file descriptor fd .

Functions like printf rely on write to write bytes to STDOUT . In our case, we will want those bytes to be written to serial instead.

On the SAMD21 chip we are using, writing bytes to serial is done using the usart_serial_putchar function. We can use it to implement write :

static struct usart_module stdio_uart_module ; int _write ( int fd , char * buf , int count ) { int written = 0 ; for (; count != 0 ; -- count ) { if ( usart_serial_putchar ( & stdio_uart_module , ( uint8_t ) * buf ++ )) { return - 1 ; } ++ written ; } return written ; }

We’ll also need to initialize the USART peripheral prior to calling printf:

static void serial_init ( void ) { struct usart_config usart_conf ; usart_get_config_defaults ( & usart_conf ); usart_conf . mux_setting = USART_RX_3_TX_2_XCK_3 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad0 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad1 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad2 = PINMUX_PB22D_SERCOM5_PAD2 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad3 = PINMUX_PB23D_SERCOM5_PAD3 ; usart_serial_init ( & stdio_uart_module , SERCOM5 , & usart_conf ); usart_enable ( & stdio_uart_module ); } int main () { serial_init (); printf ( "Hello, World!

" ); while ( 1 ) {} }

read

read attempts to read up to count bytes from file descriptor fd into the buffer at buf .

Similarly to write , we want read to read bytes from serial:

int _read ( int fd , char * buf , int count ) { int read = 0 ; for (; count > 0 ; -- count ) { usart_serial_getchar ( & stdio_uart_module , ( uint8_t * ) buf ++ ); read ++ ; } return read ; }

sbrk

sbrk increases the program’s data space by increment bytes. In other words, it increases the size of the heap.

What does printf have to do with the heap, you will justly ask? It turns out that newlib’s printf implementations allocates data on the heap and depends on a working malloc implementation.

The source for printf is hard to follow, but you will find that indeed it calls malloc!

Here’s a simple implementation of sbrk :

void * _sbrk ( int incr ) { static unsigned char * heap = HEAP_START ; unsigned char * prev_heap = heap ; heap += incr ; return prev_heap ; }

More often than not, we want the heap to use all the RAM not used by anything else. We therefore set HEAP_START to the first address not spoken for in our linker script. In our previous post, we had added the _end variable in our linker script to that end.

We replace HEAP_START with _end and get:

void * _sbrk ( int incr ) { static unsigned char * heap = NULL ; unsigned char * prev_heap ; if ( heap == NULL ) { heap = ( unsigned char * ) & _end ; } prev_heap = heap ; heap += incr ; return prev_heap ; }

Putting it all together, we get the following main.c file:

static struct usart_module stdio_uart_module ; // LIBC SYSCALLS ///////////////////// extern int _end ; void * _sbrk ( int incr ) { static unsigned char * heap = NULL ; unsigned char * prev_heap ; if ( heap == NULL ) { heap = ( unsigned char * ) & _end ; } prev_heap = heap ; heap += incr ; return prev_heap ; } int _close ( int file ) { return - 1 ; } int _fstat ( int file , struct stat * st ) { st -> st_mode = S_IFCHR ; return 0 ; } int _isatty ( int file ) { return 1 ; } int _lseek ( int file , int ptr , int dir ) { return 0 ; } void _exit ( int status ) { __asm ( "BKPT #0" ); } void _kill ( int pid , int sig ) { return ; } int _getpid ( void ) { return - 1 ; } int _write ( int file , char * ptr , int len ) { int written = 0 ; if (( file != 1 ) && ( file != 2 ) && ( file != 3 )) { return - 1 ; } for (; len != 0 ; -- len ) { if ( usart_serial_putchar ( & stdio_uart_module , ( uint8_t ) * ptr ++ )) { return - 1 ; } ++ written ; } return written ; } int _read ( int file , char * ptr , int len ) { int read = 0 ; if ( file != 0 ) { return - 1 ; } for (; len > 0 ; -- len ) { usart_serial_getchar ( & stdio_uart_module , ( uint8_t * ) ptr ++ ); read ++ ; } return read ; } // APP //////////////////// static void __attribute__ (( constructor )) serial_init ( void ) { struct usart_config usart_conf ; usart_get_config_defaults ( & usart_conf ); usart_conf . mux_setting = USART_RX_3_TX_2_XCK_3 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad0 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad1 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad2 = PINMUX_PB22D_SERCOM5_PAD2 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad3 = PINMUX_PB23D_SERCOM5_PAD3 ; usart_serial_init ( & stdio_uart_module , SERCOM5 , & usart_conf ); usart_enable ( & stdio_uart_module ); } int main () { serial_init (); printf ( "Hello, World!

" ); }

This compiles fine, and can be run on our MCU. Hello, World!

Initializing State with Constructors & Destructors

Although we could perfectly well stop here, we can improve a bit over the above.

In our example, printf depends implicitly on serial_init being called. This isn’t the end of the world, but it goes against the spirit of a standard library function which should be usable anywhere in our program.

Instead, let’s see what we can do so that this works:

int main () { printf ( "Hello, World

" ); }

Can you think of a solution?

If we want printf to work anywhere in our main function, then serial_init must be run before main. What runs before main? We know from our previous post that it is the Reset_Handler . A simple solution might therefore be:

void Reset_Handler ( void ) { /* ... */ /* Hardware Initialization */ serial_init (); /* Branch to main function */ main (); /* Infinite loop */ while ( 1 ); }

The GNU compiler collection and Newlib offer an alternative solution: constructors.

Constructors are functions which should be run before main . Conceptually, they are similar to the constructors of statically allocated C++ objects.

A function is marked as a constructor using the attribute syntax: __attribute__((constructor)) . We can thus update serial_init :

static void __attribute__ (( constructor )) serial_init ( void ) { struct usart_config usart_conf ; usart_get_config_defaults ( & usart_conf ); usart_conf . mux_setting = USART_RX_3_TX_2_XCK_3 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad0 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad1 = PINMUX_UNUSED ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad2 = PINMUX_PB22D_SERCOM5_PAD2 ; usart_conf . pinmux_pad3 = PINMUX_PB23D_SERCOM5_PAD3 ; usart_serial_init ( & stdio_uart_module , SERCOM5 , & usart_conf ); usart_enable ( & stdio_uart_module ); }

But how do these constructors get invoked? We know that in firmware, we do not get anything for free. This is where newlib comes in.

By default, GCC will put every constructor into an array in their own section of flash. Newlib then offers a function, __libc_init_array which iterates over the array and invokes every constructor. You can find out more about it by reading the source code.

All we need to do is call __libc_init_array prior to main in our Reset_Handler , and we are good to go.

void Reset_Handler ( void ) { /* ... */ /* Run constructors / initializers */ __libc_init_array (); /* Branch to main function */ main (); /* Infinite loop */ while ( 1 ); }

Newlib and Multi-threading

We have not yet talked much about multi-threading (e.g. with an RTOS) in this series, and going into details is outside of the scope of this article. However, there are a few things worth knowing when using Newlib in a multi-threaded environment.

_impure_ptr and the _reent struct

Most Newlib functions are reentrant. This means that they can be called by multiple processes safely.

For the functions that cannot be easily made re-entrant, newlib depends on the operating system correctly setting the _impure_ptr variable whenever a context switch occur. That variable is expected to hold a struct _reent for the current thread. That struct is used to store state for standard library functions being used by that thread.

Locking shared memory

Some standard library functions depend on global memory which would not make sense to hold in the _reent struct. This is especially important when using malloc to allocate memory out of the heap. If mutliple threads try modifying the heap at the same time, they risk corrupting it.

To allow multiple threads to call malloc , Newlib provides the __malloc_lock and __malloc_unlock APIs. A good implementation of these APIs would lock and unlock a recursive mutex.

Implementing our own C standard library

In some cases, you may want to take different tradeoffs than the ones taken by the implementers of Newlib. Perhaps you are willing to sacrifice some functionality for code space, or are willing to trade performance for security. In most cases it is easier to replace a few functions, though you may end up with a fully custom C library.

Replacing a function

Because Newlib is a static library with a separate object file for every function, all you need to do to replace a function is define it in your program. The linker won’t go looking for it in static libraries if it finds it in your code.

For example, we may want to replace Newlib’s printf implementation, either because it is too large or because it depends on dynamic memory management. Using Marco Paland’s excellent alternative is as simple as a Makefile change.

We first clone it in our firmware’s folder under lib/printf , and update our Makefile to reflect the change:

PROJECT := with-libc BUILD_DIR ?= build INCLUDES = \ ... \ lib/printf SRCS = \ ... \ lib/printf/printf.c \ startup_samd21.c \ $(PROJECT) .c include ../common-standalone.mk

Full replacement

In some cases, you may want to do away with Newlib altogether. Perhaps you don’t want any dynamic memory allocation, in which case you could use Embedded Artistry’s solid alternative. Another good reason to replace the version of Newlib provided by your toolchain is to use your own build of it because you would like to use different compile-time flags.

Once we have copied the static lib ( .a ) for our selected libc, we disable Newlib with -nostdlib and explicitly link in our substitute library. You can find the resulting Makefile below:

PROJECT := with-libc BUILD_DIR ?= build CFLAGS += -nostdlib LDFLAGS += -L ../lib/embeddedartistry_libc -lc INCLUDES = \ $(ASF_PATH) /sam0/drivers/sercom \ $(ASF_PATH) /sam0/drivers/sercom/usart \ $(ASF_PATH) /common/services/serial \ $(ASF_PATH) /common/services/serial/sam0_usart SRCS = \ $(ASF_PATH) /sam0/drivers/sercom/usart/usart.c \ $(ASF_PATH) /sam0/drivers/sercom/sercom.c \ startup_samd21.c \ $(PROJECT) .c include ../common-standalone.mk

Note that the __libc_init_array functionality is not found in every standard C library. You will either need to avoid using it, or bring in Newlib’s implementation.

Closing

We hope reading this post has given you an understanding of how standard C functions come to be available in firmware code. As with previous posts, code examples are available in the Zero to Main Github repository.

Got a favorite libc implementation? Tell us all about it in the comments, or at interrupt@memfault.com.

Next time in the series, we’ll talk about Rust!

EDIT: Post written! - From Zero to main(): Bare metal Rust