Skip to content
Riot Documentation

Supported Architectures

RIOT supports a wide range of architectures. This page lists the architectures supported by RIOT OS and the required software packages for each architecture.

Architecture: ARM7 and ARM Cortex M*

  • GCC, binutils, and newlib for arm-none-eabi
    • Alternatively: Install docker and export BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1
  • OpenOCD for debugging/flashing (most boards)
    • Some boards use UF2 based bootloaders, which require auto-mounting to work with make flash
    • Some boards default to using J-Link for flashing/debugging. Either install that or export PROGRAMMER=openocd to just use OpenOCD instead
    • installation instructions can be found here
  • Optional: picolibc for arm-none-eabi to link against picolibc instead of newlib
  • Optional: clang to build with TOOLCHAIN=llvm
  • Optional: GDB multiarch for debugging
    • If no multiarch package is available, use GDB for arm-none-eabi instead

Architecture: Xtensa

ESP32

ESP8266

Architecture: AVR

  • GCC and binutils for AVR and avrlibc
    • Alternatively: Install docker and export BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1
  • avrdude for flashing
  • Optional: AVaRICE and GDB (multiarch version) for debugging

Architecture: RISC-V

  • GCC, binutils, and newlib for RISC-V (target triple should start with riscv and end with -none-elf or -unknown-elf. Note that most packages are multilib, e.g. riscv64-unknown-elf will likely work fine for 32 bit RISC-V boards)
    • Alternatively: Install docker and export BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1
  • OpenOCD for debugging/flashing (some new boards might require a patched version of OpenOCD or a recent build from the git sources)
  • Optional: picolibc to link against picolibc instead of newlib (recommended)
  • Optional: clang to build with TOOLCHAIN=llvm
  • Optional: GDB multiarch for debugging

Architecture: MSP430

  • GCC, binutils, and newlib for MSP430
    • Alternatively: Install docker and export BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1
  • mspdebug for flashing/debugging
  • Optional: GDB multiarch for debugging

Architecture: native

  • On 64 bit systems: multilib versions for your host compilers, standard C library, and development headers
    • Alternatively: Compile with BUILD_IN_DOCKER=1. Note that for running the executable you still need a multilib system (or 32 bit Linux) with glibc a standard C library.
  • A C library supporting the deprecated POSIX.1-2001 ucontext library (e.g. glibc, FreeBSD’s libc)
  • Optional: GDB for debugging. (Prefer the multiarch version, this will also work for other boards)