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Getting started with PSn00bSDK

  1. Install prerequisites. Currently CMake is the only external dependency; you can install it from here or using MSys2 or your distro's package manager. Make sure you have at least CMake 3.21.

  2. Head over to the releases page, download the latest release's ZIP for your operating system and extract its contents to a directory of your choice, preferably one whose absolute path is short (such as C:\PSn00bSDK or /opt/psn00bsdk). Proceed to add the bin subdirectory you extracted (e.g. C:\PSn00bSDK\bin or /opt/psn00bsdk/bin) to your PATH environment variable, through System Properties on Windows or by modifying your profile script on Linux.

  3. You may optionally set the PSN00BSDK_LIBS environment variable to point to the lib/libpsn00b subdirectory (again, the full path would be something like C:\PSn00bSDK\lib\libpsn00b or /opt/psn00bsdk/lib/libpsn00b). Doing so is highly recommended as it will save you from having to hardcode a path to the SDK in your projects later on.

  4. You should now be able to invoke the compiler (mipsel-none-elf-gcc) as well as PSn00bSDK commands such as elf2x and mkpsxiso. If you get "command not found" errors try rebooting, otherwise you can skip to Creating a project.

Building from source

The instructions below are for Windows and Linux. Building on macOS hasn't been tested extensively yet, however it should work once the GCC toolchain is built and installed properly.

IMPORTANT: due to a bug in libflac (used by mkpsxiso), building using MinGW on Windows currently requires -DMKPSXISO_NO_LIBFLAC=ON to be passed to CMake when configuring PSn00bSDK. This will result in the dumpsxiso utility being built without support for ripping CD audio tracks to FLAC, however the mkpsxiso command will still retain FLAC support.

  1. Install prerequisites and a host compiler toolchain. On Linux (most distros) install the following packages from your distro's package manager:
  • git
  • build-essential, base-devel or similar
  • make or ninja-build
  • cmake (3.21 or later is required, download it from here if your package manager only provides older versions)

On Windows you can obtain these dependencies by installing MSys2, opening the "MSys2 MSYS" shell and running:

bash pacman -Syu git mingw-w64-x86_64-make mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

If you are prompted to close the shell, you may have to reopen it afterwards and rerun the command to finish installation. Do not use the MSys2 shell for the next steps, use a regular command prompt or PowerShell instead.

Add these directories (replace C:\msys64 if you installed MSys2 to a different location) to the PATH environment variable using System Properties:

  • C:\msys64\mingw64\bin
  • C:\msys64\usr\bin
  1. Download a precompiled copy of the GCC toolchain for mipsel-none-elf from the releases page and extract it into one of the directories listed in step 3. If you want to build the toolchain yourself, see toolchain.md.

NOTE: PSn00bSDK is also compatible with toolchains that target mipsel-unknown-elf. If you already have such a toolchain, you can use it by passing -DPSN00BSDK_TARGET=mipsel-unknown-elf to CMake when configuring the SDK (see step 5).

  1. If you chose a non-standard install location for the toolchain, add the bin subfolder (inside the top-level toolchain directory) to the PATH environment variable. This step is unnecessary if you installed/extracted the toolchain into any of these directories:
  • C:\Program Files\mipsel-none-elf
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\mipsel-none-elf
  • C:\mipsel-none-elf
  • /usr/local/mipsel-none-elf
  • /usr/mipsel-none-elf
  • /opt/mipsel-none-elf
  1. Clone the PSn00bSDK repo, then run the following command from the PSn00bSDK repository to download additional dependencies:

bash git submodule update --init --recursive

  1. Compile the libraries, tools and examples using CMake:

bash cmake --preset default . cmake --build ./build

If you want to install the SDK to a custom location rather than the default one (C:\Program Files\PSn00bSDK or /usr/local depending on your OS), add --install-prefix <location> to the first command. Remember to add -DPSN00BSDK_TARGET=mipsel-unknown-elf if necessary.

NOTE: Ninja is used by default to build the SDK. If you can't get it to work or don't have it installed, pass -G "Unix Makefiles" (or -G "MinGW Makefiles" on Windows) to the first command to build using make instead.

  1. Install the SDK to the path you chose (add sudo or run it from a command prompt with admin privileges if necessary):

bash cmake --install ./build

This will create and populate the following subfolders in the installation directory:

  • bin
  • lib/libpsn00b
  • share/psn00bsdk
  1. You may optionally set the PSN00BSDK_LIBS environment variable to point to the lib/libpsn00b subfolder inside the install directory. Doing so is highly recommended as it will save you from having to hardcode a path to the SDK in your projects later on. You might also want to add the bin folder to PATH if it's not listed already.

Although not strictly required, you'll probably want to install a PS1 emulator with debugging capabilities such as no$psx (Windows only), DuckStation or pcsx-redux. Avoid ePSXe and anything based on MAME as they are inaccurate.

Building installer packages

CPack can be used to build NSIS-based installers, DEB/RPM packages and zipped releases that include built SDK libraries, headers as well as the GCC toolchain. Distributing prebuilt releases is however discouraged since PSn00bSDK is still far from being feature-complete.

  1. Follow steps 1-4 above to set up the toolchain, then install NSIS on Windows or dpkg and rpm on Linux.

  2. Run the following commands from the PSn00bSDK directory (pass the appropriate options to the first command if necessary):

bash cmake --preset package . cmake --build ./build -t package

All built packages will be copied to the build/packages folder.

Creating a project

  1. Copy the contents of share/psn00bsdk/template within the PSn00bSDK installation directory (or the template folder within the repo) to a new empty folder, which will become your project's root directory.

  2. If you haven't set the PSN00BSDK_LIBS environment variable previously or if you want to use a different PSn00bSDK installation for the project, edit CMakePresets.json to set the path you installed the SDK to. See the setup guide for details.

  3. Configure and build the template by running:

bash cmake --preset default . cmake --build ./build

If you did everything correctly there should be a template.bin CD image in the build folder. Test it in an emulator to ensure it works.

The toolchain script defines a few CMake macros to create PS1 executables, DLLs and CD images. See the reference for details.

Last updated on 2022-10-11 by spicyjpeg

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