[DEV TUT] Vita programming Tutorials: Part 0 -- Installation

[thevitamaster]

Hi guys,
welcome to my tutorial series on how to develop homebrew for the Vita with the unofficial vitaSDK toolchain and vita2dlib. In this series, we will start with part zero, which guides you through the installation of the necessary components, then we will continue in part one with a graphical hello world and we'll do a Game Menu in part two. Along the way, I'll explain all the function calls in the sample programs, and why they are needed, to you. Now, let's get started.

Requirements:
- An up-to-date Linux distribution which runs either natively or in a VM (some distros have Virtualbox images, so you can just plug and play, for example the Kali Linux distribution).
To update your linux system (provided you use apt as your package manager), you can open a terminal and type:

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apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

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- An internet connection
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- Some common sense for troubleshooting, etc.
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So, let's begin with the installation of the VitaSDK toolchain.
Here we'll do a manual install instead of running the automated vdpm script, because we want to keep a light ship and know exactly where everything is located.
1.:
Open a terminal and download the nightly build of the linux version:

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wget https://bintray.com/vitasdk/vitasdk/download_file?file_path=vitasdk-gcc-5.4-linux-compat-nightly-e4a61561aa42a32280c28406395a9e82fb0e75cd.tar.bz2

2.: Untar the archive:

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tar -xvf vitasdk-gcc-5.4-linux-compat-nightly-e4a61561aa42a32280c28406395a9e82fb0e75cd.tar.bz2 

3.: Move the contents of the untarred folder into the correctly named one:

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mkdir vitasdk
mv ~/gcc-arm-vita-eabi-5_4-2016q3/* ~/vitasdk/
rmdir gcc-arm-vita-eabi-5_4-2016q3/

4.: Move the vitasdk folder to /usr/local/:

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mv ~/vitasdk/ /usr/local/vitasdk

5.: Set the $VITASDK enviroment variable (this step varies between linux distributions):

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gedit ~/.bashrc

then press control+f and type .bash_aliases.
If this returns anything, then execute

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 gedit ~/.bash_aliases 

and add the line:

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export VITASDK=/usr/local/vitasdk

else, add the line

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export VITASDK=/usr/local/vitasdk

to your .bashrc file (gedit ~./bashrc)

Now, we install vita_portlibs followed by vitasdk:
1.:
Clone vita_portlibs

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git clone https://github.com/xerpi/vita_portlibs
cd vita_portlibs

2.:
Make

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sudo make

3.:
Clean up

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cd .. & rm -R vita_portlibs

4.:
Clone vita2dlib and install it

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git clone https://github.com/xerpi/libvita2d
cd libvita2d/libvita2d/
sudo make & sudo make install

5.:
And, lastly, it's always good to clean up behind you!

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cd ~/
rm -R libvita2d

And that was it! Quite simple, right?

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[domis4]

Thank you for the really helpfull tutorial!
My 2 cents are maybe for some people helpfull, if vita_portlibs make fails (like mine) with the error:

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domi@domispc:~/vita_portlibs$ make
Using arm-vita-eabi-gcc-ar
Checking for arm-vita-eabi-gcc...
Compiler error reporting is too harsh for ./configure (perhaps remove -Werror).
** ./configure aborting.
Makefile:97: recipe for target 'zlib' failed
make: *** [zlib] Error 1

this is on some distros relevant and solved my problem:
https://github.com/xerpi/vita_portlibs/ ... /README.md

This will install the portlibs to $VITASDK. If this is a privileged location, you will need to sudo make install-zlib and sudo make install in order for the portlibs to be installed.

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[thevitamaster]

Thank you for the really helpfull tutorial!
My 2 cents are maybe for some people helpfull, if vita_portlibs make fails (like mine) with the error:

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domi@domispc:~/vita_portlibs$ make
Using arm-vita-eabi-gcc-ar
Checking for arm-vita-eabi-gcc...
Compiler error reporting is too harsh for ./configure (perhaps remove -Werror).
** ./configure aborting.
Makefile:97: recipe for target 'zlib' failed
make: *** [zlib] Error 1

this is on some distros relevant and solved my problem:
https://github.com/xerpi/vita_portlibs/ ... /README.md

This will install the portlibs to $VITASDK. If this is a privileged location, you will need to sudo make install-zlib and sudo make install in order for the portlibs to be installed.

Hi domis4, thanks for pointing that out. I changed the make and make install commands to be executed by root with sudo. Didn't have that at first because my build machine was running Kali Linux.

[KronosXLI]

Is there a windows equivalent setup? I'm not going to download and setup a VM just for coding.

[thevitamaster]

Is there a windows equivalent setup? I'm not going to download and setup a VM just for coding.

Yes, there is actually, and, if you're using Windows 10, you can also make the process considerably easier by using Bash for Windows.

[KronosXLI]

Is there a windows equivalent setup? I'm not going to download and setup a VM just for coding.

Yes, there is actually, and, if you're using Windows 10, you can also make the process considerably easier by using Bash for Windows.

Oh thanks, not on win10 but I guess a bit of extra work is good for learning/practice.

[KronosXLI]

How did I miss that tab on henkaku? Well, better late than never.

[Blankets_McGee]

trying to dl the nightly bulid from bintray.com....getting a 403 error...any help??? here is the original error:

Resolving bintray.com (bintray.com)... 108.168.194.93
Connecting to bintray.com (bintray.com)|108.168.194.93|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://dl.bintray.com/vitasdk/vitasdk/ ... cd.tar.bz2 [following]
--2016-11-23 22:03:03-- https://dl.bintray.com/vitasdk/vitasdk/ ... cd.tar.bz2
Resolving dl.bintray.com (dl.bintray.com)... 35.160.48.73, 35.163.95.201
Connecting to dl.bintray.com (dl.bintray.com)|35.160.48.73|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2016-11-23 22:03:03 ERROR 403: Forbidden.


what does this mean?? i tried using wget -U firefox but that doesn't help either.

[Globi]

I also run into a "403: forbidden" error in step 1.

[domis4]

for anyone getting 403, you must built from source.
https://github.com/vitasdk/buildscripts