Mr-Pnut / portable-n64-toolchain

A Dockerized N64 toolchain based on modern-n64sdk

portable-n64-toolchain

A Dockerized N64 toolchain based on modern-n64sdk

Version History

• 1.0.2 (current): Rust support added. Need to provide a target specification file. See N64-Rust-Sample for this, and example Makefile.
• 1.0.1: Spicy/Makemask added. Toolchain is precompiled now for faster builds.
• 1.0.0: Initial release.

Huh?

This is a preconfigured, ready to go N64 build environment using the "modern" N64 toolchain found https://github.com/trhodeos/modern-n64sdk (big ups trhodeos).

The goal is minimal setup of the SDK. This could potentially also make your builds CI ready -- having one central place to build your N64 project for you team, or getting people set up with an SDK asap, provided they have Docker.

Rust?

The toolchain is set up to install nightly rust channel, xargo, and settings that will allow it to build a core crate for mips-unknown-elf target. Currently, you need to have a target specifications file in your project. See N64-Rust-Sample for details. If you don't plan on using rust, you can disable it with the NO_RUST build argument.

Updating the toolchain

When your toolchain gets modified from pull or otherwise, use the --no-cache arg to guarantee a fresh build.

docker build . -t n64 --no-cache

Building the toolchain

Of course you have to have Docker installed as a prerequisite. So install it if you don't have it.

1. Clone this repo somewhere.
2. Extract the n64sdk.7z file (with /nintendo and /ultra) to the n64sdk directory of the repo.
3. Run the following, use Powershell if you're on Windows.

> cd $repo
> docker build . -t n64

At this point the toolchain will build. It will take 10 minutes at most, but you only have to build it once (unless you're updating the toolchain).

After that's done you have a Docker image of the toolchain. You can go to where the source for your project is at and run the following to build it.

> docker run -w /mnt/src -v /where/my/source/is/locally:/mnt/src -it n64 make

Windows Notes

If you install Docker For Windows you will be using the Hyper-V based implementation of Docker for windows. This matters if you plan on running a VM still, in a non Hyper-V hypervisor. I'd recommend using the older "Docker Toolbox" version of Docker in this situation if you aren't using Docker for anything else. Docker Toolbox uses VirtualBox instead of Hyper-V so you can continue to use other VMs. Docker Toolbox is the legacy installation of Docker for Windows. It's not recommended by Docker anymore for use, but it works for this use case.

Other Notes

• Depending on your SDK your paths might not line up correctly. For example, I needed to rename a few libraries to lowercase because they copied over uppercase. In this situation, just rename the files in the n64sdk subdirectory of this project that you copied over. After that just do a docker build . -t n64 (in the directory of the Dockerfile) to do a new build.

• Spicy/Makemask issues: If you get an EOF error with makemask, pad your rom with spicy -s {mbits}. I generally just pick the smallest game pak size spicy -s 32. You get the error because makemask will read bytes 0x1000 - 0x0FF000 of the rom file, which may or may not exist if the rom is small.