How to add or remove boot header for XIP targets#

The MCUXpresso SDK for i.MX RT1170 provides flexspi_nor_debug and flexspi_nor_release targets for each example and/or demo which supports XIP (eXecute-In-Place). These two targets add XIP_BOOT_HEADER to the image by default. Because of this, ROM can boot and run this image directly on external flash.

Macros for the boot leader:

The following three macros are added in flexspi_nor targets to support XIP, as described in Table 1.

|**XIP\_​EXTERNAL\_​FLASH**|1: Exclude the code which changes the clock of FLEXSPI.​|
|0: Make no changes.​|
|**XIP\_​BOOT\_​HEADER\_​ENABLE**|1: Add FLEXSPI configuration block, image vector table, boot data, and device configuration data \(optional\) to the image by default.​|
|0: Add nothing to the image by default.​|
|**XIP\_​BOOT\_​HEADER\_​DCD\_​ENABLE**|1: Add device configuration data to the image.​|
|0: Do **NOT** add device configuration data to the image.​|

Table 2 shows the different effect on the built image with a different combination of these macros.

||**XIP\_​BOOT\_​HEADER\_​DCD\_​ENABLE=1**|**XIP\_​BOOT\_​HEADER\_​DCD\_​ENABLE=0**|
|--|----------------------------------------|----------------------------------------|
|**XIP\_​EXTERNAL\_​FLASH=1**|**XIP\_​BOOT\_​HEADER\_​ENABLE=1**|    -   Can be programmed to `qspiflash` by IDE and can run after POR reset if `qspiflash` is the boot source.​
-   SDRAM will be initialized.​

| - Can be programmed to qspiflash by IDE, and can run after POR reset if qspiflash is the boot source. - SDRAM will NOT be initialized. | |XIP_BOOT_HEADER_ENABLE=0| - CANNOT run after POR reset if it is programmed by IDE, even if qspiflash is the boot source. |—| |XIP_EXTERNAL_FLASH=0| - This image CANNOT complete XIP because when this macro is set to 1, it excludes the code, which changes the clock for FLEXSPI. |

Where to change the macros for each toolchain in MCUXpresso SDK?

Take hello_world as an example:

IAR
MDK
ARMGCC

Change the configuration in CMakeLists.txt.
MCUX