BPF SDK path does not exist

Question

I'm following the Anchor docs here, but I keep getting this error...

BPF SDK path does not exist: /Users/herbie/.cargo/bin/sdk/bpf: No such file or directory (os error 2)

I ran ls -al /Users/herbie/.cargo/bin and got this output:

total 239152
drwxr-xr-x  17 herbie  staff       544 31 Jan 16:55 .
drwxr-xr-x   9 herbie  staff       288 13 Dec 11:58 ..
-rwxr-xr-x   1 herbie  staff  12574724 31 Jan 16:49 anchor
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 cargo
-rwxr-xr-x   1 herbie  staff   7578989 14 Dec 14:05 cargo-build-bpf
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 cargo-clippy
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 cargo-fmt
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 cargo-miri
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 clippy-driver
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rls
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rust-gdb
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rust-lldb
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rustc
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rustdoc
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rustfmt
-rwxr-xr-x  12 herbie  staff   8521112 31 Jan 16:55 rustup

Haven't found much online, and have never heard of BPF before...

Answer 1

It's unclear when you're getting the error during the installation, but here's a few things to try:

• be sure that you're using an up-to-date version of Rust stable with rustup update stable
• check that you're using the Solana CLI version designated in the docs using solana -V
• run cargo build-bpf on the hello world Rust application: https://github.com/solana-labs/example-helloworld/tree/master/src/program-rust

For more reference, BPF is the bytecode format used by on-chain programs with Solana. You can find some more info at the links contained within https://docs.solana.com/developing/on-chain-programs/overview#berkeley-packet-filter-bpf

Answer 2

Try removing the solana cache before running your code. It worked for me. Basically, the BPF SDK hasn't been installed accurately.

rm -rf ~/.cache/solana/*

After deleting the solana cache run. It should download the BPF SDK again

solana build