Running Arduino IDE in Guix

There is no Arduino IDE package for Guix. I asked why once, but I forgot what the reason was — something to do with the way that Arduino build process works I think. Anyway, this is how I get it running on my systems. I suspect this is not the best way, but it works for me. The process is a little convoluted, but I don’t use the IDE very often, so I haven’t been motivated to figure out something better. Typically all I need is avrdude, in order to load Forth firmware onto the chips, and there is an avrdude package available in Guix, as well as a avr-toolchain package and a few other tools.

First you need to make a clone of the git repo:

git clone https://github.com/arduino/Arduino.git

Specifically I am using the some old commit bf24880d7c559751765a43cd1669d893bba267e8, which is the commit for Arduino IDE version 1.8.14, but maybe a newer version would work also.

After changing into the build directory, you must setup the proper build/run environment. I do this by having the following manifest file saved at ~/Manifests/arduino-ide-run.scm:

(use-modules (gnu packages java))

(concatenate-manifests
 (list
  (specifications->manifest
   '("ant"
     "avr-toolchain"
     "bash"
     "coreutils"
     "git"
     "grep"
     "libx11"
     "libxrandr"
     "libxtst"
     "lbzip2"
     "sed"
     "tar"
     "unzip"
     "patchelf"
     "which"))
  (packages->manifest
   `((,icedtea "jdk")))))

Then I set up the environment with the command…

guix environment --pure --preserve='DISPLAY' --preserve='GDM' --preserve='DBUS' --preserve='GIO' --preserve='XDG' --preserve='WINDOW' --preserve='SESSION' --preserve='XCUR' --preserve='DESKTOP' --preserve='XAUTH' -m ~/Manifests/arduino-ide-run.scm

If you want to use the same environment as I am using right now, prefix the command above with guix time-machine --commit=079a7f2c65c51da7b53b0e5ef44c516dc8eaab6e --. (I’m running Gnome DE, but I’m not sure if that makes any difference.)

Then run the command ant run &. In a minute or so you should see the IDE appear.

I problem I have at this point is that, although the IDE runs, you are not able to compile sketches, because the executables in the avr-gcc toolchain are looking for linker & glibc stuff in the wrong place on your system. I fix this by running the following script after the IDE starts, which I have saved in the file ~/Scripts/arduino-patchelf.sh:

GLIBC=/gnu/store/fa6wj5bxkj5ll1d7292a70knmyl7a0cr-glibc-2.31/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
RPATH=/gnu/store/fa6wj5bxkj5ll1d7292a70knmyl7a0cr-glibc-2.31/lib/
BUILD_DIR=/home/christopher/Repos/Arduino/build

patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../libexec/gcc/avr/7.3.0/cc1plus
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-g++
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/tools-builder/ctags/5.8-arduino11/ctags
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../lib/gcc/avr/7.3.0/../../../../avr/bin/as
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-gcc
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../libexec/gcc/avr/7.3.0/cc1
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-gcc-ar
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../lib/gcc/avr/7.3.0/../../../../avr/bin/ar
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../libexec/gcc/avr/7.3.0/collect2
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../lib/gcc/avr/7.3.0/../../../../avr/bin/ld
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../libexec/gcc/avr/7.3.0/lto-wrapper
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/../lib/gcc/../../libexec/gcc/avr/7.3.0/lto1
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-objcopy
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avrdude
patchelf --set-interpreter ${GLIBC} --set-rpath ${RPATH} ${BUILD_DIR}/linux/work/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-size

You will need to adjust the variables on top according to the location of things on your system. Unfortunately, it is necessary to run this script every time you call ant run, or at least I haven’t figured out a way to get around that. I’ve been told it is possible instead to just set a symbolic link from the “standard” location glibc location to the actual location, but I didn’t want to do this for fear that there might be some effect on the purity of my other build environments.

Hopefully somebody will put together a Guix package soon, but this is a workaround in the meantime.