Prerequisites & Requirements

This document describes the software and hardware requiremnts for building TF-A Tests for AArch32 and AArch64 target platforms.

It may be possible to build TF-A Tests with combinations of software and hardware that are different from those listed below. The software and hardware described in this document are officially supported.

Build Host

TF-A Tests may be built using a Linux build host machine with a recent Linux distribution. We have performed tests using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (64-bit), but other distributions should also work fine, provided that the tools and libraries can be installed.

Dependencies

TFTF includes several dependencies managed as Git submodules. You can find the full list of these dependencies in the .gitmodules file.

Initial Clone with Submodules

If you’re cloning the repository for the first time, run the following commands to initialize and fetch all submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules "https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/tf-a-tests"

This ensures all submodules are correctly checked out.

Updating Submodules

If the project updates the reference to a submodule (e.g., points to a new commit of libtl), you can update your local copy by running:

git pull --rebase --ff-only
git submodule update --init --recursive

To fetch the latest commits from all submodules, you can use:

git submodule update --remote

Toolchain

Install the required packages to build TF-A Tests with the following command:

sudo apt-get install device-tree-compiler build-essential git python3

Note that at least Python 3.8 is required.

Download and install the GNU cross-toolchain from Arm. The TF-A Tests have been tested with version 15.2.Rel1 (GCC 15.2):

GCC cross-toolchain

In addition, the following optional packages and tools may be needed:

For debugging, Arm Development Studio (Arm-DS).