Renode was created by Antmicro as a virtual development tool for multinode embedded networks (both wired and wireless) and is intended to enable a scalable workflow for creating effective, tested and secure IoT systems.
With Renode, developing, testing, debugging and simulating unmodified software for IoT devices is fast, cost-effective and reliable.
Supported architectures include:
- ARM Cortex-A and Cortex-M
- x86
- RISC-V
- SPARC
- PowerPC
Renode was created based on many years of experience with the development of software for embedded systems - both for gateways, on-board computers as well as sensor nodes and microcontrollers.
Testing and developing physical embedded systems is difficult due to poor reproducibility and lack of insight into the current state of a system, especially in multinode scenarios.
Renode addresses this issue by letting you run unmodified binaries, identical to the ones that you would normally flash onto their target hardware, on a virtual board or system of boards.
One important aspect of the tool is that it simulates not only CPUs but entire SoCs (including e.g. heterogeneous multicore SoCs and various peripherals) as well as the wired or wireless connections between them, which allows users to address complex scenarios and test real production software.
Renode requires Mono >= 5.0. To install it on Linux, use:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF echo "deb http://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian wheezy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-xamarin.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mono-complete
On macOS, Mono can be downloaded from the official Mono project website.
With Mono instelled as described above, use the *.deb, *.rpm, *.pkg.tar.xz files for Linux and *.dmg files for macOS from the releases section as normal to install Renode using your package manager.
For Windows, just unzip the *.zip package in the directory of your choice.
Once you install Renode, you can skip directly to Running Renode.
The following instructions have been tested on Ubuntu 16.04, however there should not be any major issues preventing you from using other (especially Debian-based) distributions as well.
Apart from Mono, Renode on Linux has several other requirements, which you can install with:
sudo apt-get install git automake autoconf libtool g++ realpath gksu libgtk2.0-dev dialog screen uml-utilities gtk-sharp2
Apart from Mono, Renode on macOS has several other requirements, which can be installed with:
brew install binutils gnu-sed coreutils homebrew/versions/gcc49 dialog
Note
This requires homebrew to be installed in your system.
Prior to cloning the source code repository, configure git appropriately:
git config --global core.autocrlf false git config --global core.symlinks true
The prerequisites for Renode on Windows are as follows:
- MSBuild 15.0
- .NET versions 4.0, 4.5, 4.7
- Cygwin (with modules: openssh, dialog)
- MinGW (with module: pthreads)
- Python 2.7 (with modules: robotframework, netifaces, requests)
- Gtk# 2.12.30 (this exact version is required, downloadable from the Xamarin website
- Git (either natively on Windows or as a Cygwin module)
The build process described further on in this document can only be executed in a Cygwin shell. To be able to use all of the prerequisites, configure Cygwin's PATH variable to include the following directories:
- MSBuild
- Python
- MinGW
- Gtk#
- Git (if installed as a Windows application)
It is required to use Python installed as a native Windows application, not as a Cygwin module. If there are multiple Python versions installed on the machine used for developing Renode, Cygwin will use the first instance found in its PATH.
Renode’s source code is available from GitHub:
git clone https://github.com/renode/renode.git
Submodules will be automatically initialised and downloaded during the build process, so you do not need to do it at this point.
To build Renode, run:
./build.sh
There are some optional flags you can use:
-c clean instead of building -d build in debug configuration -v verbose mode -p build binary packages (requires some additional dependencies)
You may also build Renode.sln from your IDE (like MonoDevelop), but the build.sh script has to be run at least once.
If you installed from a package, you should have a system-wide renode command that you can use to run the tool:
renode [flags] [file]
If you built it from source, navigate to the relevant directory and use:
./renode [flags] [file]
The optional [file] argument allows the user to provide the path to a script to be run on startup.
The script allows several optional flags, most useful of which are presented below:
-d debug mode (requires prior build in debug configuration) - only available when built from source -e COMMAND execute command on startup (does not allow the [file] argument) -p remove steering codes (e.g., colours) from output -P PORT listen on a port for monitor commands instead of opening a window -h help & usage
On Windows systems Renode can be run by starting Renode.exe with a similar set of optional flags.
Documentation is under development, available on Read the Docs.
Renode is released under the permissive MIT license. For details, see the LICENSE file.
We’re happy to accept bug reports, feature requests and contributions via GitHub pull requests / issues. For details, see the CONTRIBUTING.rst file.
Commercial support for Renode is provided by Antmicro, a company specializing in helping its clients to adopt new embedded technologies and modern development methodologies.
Antmicro created and maintains the Renode framework and related tooling, and is happy to provide services such as adding new platforms, integrations, plugins and tools.
To inquire about our services, contact us at support@renode.io.