Building the Firmware

Rotorflight builds with GNU Make and the ARM GCC toolchain, on Linux, macOS or Windows (with WSL).

Unified targets

There's one firmware build per MCU family, not per board:

Target	MCU
STM32F405	F405
STM32F411	F411
STM32F7X2	F722 / F7x2
STM32F745	F745
STM32G47X	G474
STM32H743	H743

The pins, timers and defaults for each board are a board configuration in rotorflight-targets, applied on top of the unified firmware by the Configurator when it flashes. See Custom Board Configuration.

Building

git clone https://github.com/rotorflight/rotorflight-firmware.git
cd rotorflight-firmware
make arm_sdk_install          # once: downloads the toolchain into tools/
make TARGET=STM32F7X2         # one target
make unified                  # all targets

The .hex files land in obj/. make help lists the options. Extra defines go in OPTIONS, for example make TARGET=STM32F7X2 OPTIONS="USE_SOMETHING" -- see Customizing the Build.

The repository also has a Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml for building in a container.

Flashing your build

In the Configurator's Firmware Flasher, choose your board, then Load Local and pick your .hex. The board configuration is still combined with it at flash time.

Tests

make test

runs the unit tests (PID, setpoint, maths and others). The governor, mixer, servos, rescue and levelling have few or no tests, so changes there need extra care -- and, where possible, a new test. See Test Coverage.

Debugging

See Hardware Debugging and Debugging with VS Code and J-Link.