Installing devkitARM

devkitARM is required to use Serial Loops on all platforms.

• Using the Windows graphical installer, you can simply select the devkitARM (Nintendo DS) workloads
• On macOS and Linux, run sudo dkp-pacman -S nds-dev from the terminal after installing the devkitPro pacman distribution.

Installing Make or Docker

To assemble ASM hacks you want to apply, you will need to decide whether to use Make or Docker. Make is automatically installed when using the Debian and RPM packages we distribute, so you don't need to worry about this step if you're using either of those.

Currently, the Docker path is only supported on Windows due to operating system and framework limitations. It is possible to get Docker running just fine on Linux distros by running SerialLoops as root (e.g. sudo SerialLoops), but it's easier to just use Make. On macOS, there is no known way of getting the Docker path to work, so you will have to use Make.

• Make is the software used to assemble assembly hacks. Installing Make allows you to build the hacks directly on your system.
  • To install on Windows, you will have to use a terminal and a package manager. Your options are Winget (installed by default on Win10+) or Chocolatey. Open an admin PowerShell or Terminal window (Winkey + X + A) and enter winget install GnuWin32.make for Winget or choco install make for Chocolatey. If using Winget, you will then have to go into system preferences and add Make to the path.
  • Installation on macOS can be done through Xcode or Homebrew. If using Xcode, open a terminal and type xcode-select --install. If you would rather use Homebrew, open a terminal after installing Homebrew and type brew install make.
  • Make comes preinstalled on many Linux distributions, and if you're using the Debian or RPM package, it was definitely installed when you installed Serial Loops. If you're using the tar.gz it is not installed on yours, you will likely be able to install it as simply as [packagemanger] install make from a terminal.
  
  To test if make is installed properly, type make --verison into a terminal and see if it produces the version of make.
• If you would rather not install Make, or if it is not working properly, you can instead run it through a Docker container. To do this, you should install Docker Desktop or the Docker Engine. Ensure the Docker engine is running and make sure to check the "Use Docker for ASM Hacks" option in Preferences. You may want to occasionally clean up containers created by Serial Loops, as it will create many of them.
  • On Windows, you will additionally need to install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). From an admin PowerShell or Terminal window (Winkey + X + A), simply type wsl --install to install it.

Installing SDL2 (Linux)

If you're running on Linux and not using one of the package releases (the Flatpak, .deb, or .rpm), you will also need to install SDL2 which is used for audio processing.