PureBasic for Raspberry PI

Not so long ago, PureBasic version 6.00 was released, which, among other things, added support for ARM processors. Raspberry PI is on the list of platforms, but other similar single board computers should probably be supported. I have tested the work on most Raspberry PI models, including the simplest – Zero and the top one at the moment – 4B. All were running Raspberry Pi OS April 4th 2022. As expected, PureBasic started up and ran fine on all test Raspberry PIs.

To install PureBasic on Raspberry Pi, you should download it from the official website https://www.purebasic.com You need to choose the version that matches the bitness of the operating system. That is, for a 32-bit OS, an archive for arm32 is required, and for a 64-bit OS, arm64.

Installation is performed by extracting the archive to any folder (for example, to the home of the current user) for which there are access rights. Further actions are described in the INSTALL file from the archive.

To compile applications, you need to install several developer (dev) packages. Their list is given in the INSTALL file and depends on the type of applications being developed. Or you can install all required packages (overkill in many cases) by typing the following line in a terminal.

sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc g++ libxxf86vm-dev libxine2-dev unixodbc-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl2-dev libssl-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev libvlc-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-glx qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev qtmultimedia5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev libqt5svg5-dev libqt5webkit5-dev libqt5multimedia5-plugins

The entire process from downloading PureBasic to installing packages and running the test application can be seen in the video.

The examples folder contains several dozen different sample programs. The launch of some of them is shown in the video.

The Linux version of PureBasic provides a choice of three GUI subsystems – GTK2, GTK3 (default) and Qt. This does not require any changes to the code. It is enough to specify the subsystem in the compiler settings.

On the Raspberry Pi 4B, 3D sample applications work fine, even though Raspberry is not designed for 3D graphics.

Small twitching of the picture due to video recording from the screen and its encoding. Without it, the animation is smooth.

To access the raspberry hardware, the community has written a number of libraries or interfaces to existing ones. The list can be found in the topic on the official forum https://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=78338

https://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=78440

Let’s look at one example that reads the temperature of the “raspberry” processor and displays it in a window.

; Файл из которого нужно считывать температуру.
If ReadFile(0, "/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp", #PB_UTF8) = 0
  MessageRequester("", "Нет доступа к файлу", #PB_MessageRequester_Error)
  End
EndIf

; Создание окна.
OpenWindow(0, 0, 0, 250, 90, "CPU Temp", #PB_Window_SystemMenu | #PB_Window_ScreenCentered)
TextGadget(0, 0, 20, 250, 80, "", #PB_Text_Center)
SetGadgetFont(0, LoadFont(0, "FreeSans", 28, #PB_Font_Bold))
; Таймер с периодом 1 секунда.
AddWindowTimer(0, 0, 1000)
PostEvent(#PB_Event_Timer, 0, 0) ; Отправка события таймера чтобы температура появилась сразу, а не через секунду после запуска приложния.

Repeat
  Event = WaitWindowEvent() 
  If Event = #PB_Event_Timer And EventTimer() = 0 ; Сработал таймер.
    FileSeek(0, 0)                                ; Переход в начало файла.
    temp.d = ValD(ReadString(0))/1000             ; Чтение из файла и перевод с тысячных долей градуса в целые.
    SetGadgetText(0, StrD(temp, 3)+" °C")         ; Отображение в температуры в окне.
  EndIf 
Until Event = #PB_Event_CloseWindow

CloseFile(0)

At the beginning of the program, the ReadFile() function opens a system file from which the temperature will be read later. If the file is unavailable, a corresponding message appears and the program ends.

Upon successful opening of the file, a window and a text field are created in it by calling the OpenWindow() and TextGadget() functions.

The AddWindowTimer() function adds a timer to the window with a period of 1000 milliseconds (a second), and an event will be generated regularly at these intervals.

In a loop, the WaitWindowEvent() function waits for the nearest event and returns its code. If this is a timer event, the temperature is read from the file and displayed in the window.

In the case of a window close event, the loop will be interrupted and the program will end there.