Installing ESP8266 RTOS SDK on Linux

This is a short how-to guide about installing ESP8266_RTOS_SDK on Ubuntu Linux. The new version of ESP8266_RTOS_SDK (v3.0) shares the same framework with esp-idf (official development framework for ESP32). The toolchain programs access ESP8266_RTOS_SDK using IDF_PATH environment variable which can be set in ~/.bashrc file. If you’re working with both ESP8266 and ESP32 then note that toolchains are using the same variable name (IDF_PATH) but require different paths.

Install tools

sudo apt-get install git make python

Create base directory

mkdir $HOME/esp8266

Download toolchain

cd $HOME/esp8266
git clone https://github.com/espressif/ESP8266_RTOS_SDK.git

Set environment variable

Make toolchain available on your PATH.

cat << EOF >> $HOME/.bashrc
export IDF_PATH=$HOME/esp8266/ESP8266_RTOS_SDK
EOF

Refresh your terminal environment variables.

source $HOME/.bashrc

Compile & flash your first example

cd $HOME/esp8266/ESP8266_RTOS_SDK/examples/peripherals/gpio
make
make flash