Devcontainer for Zephyr

Prerequisites

• docker can be used with user privileges. Test with docker ps and see if you observe an error.
• Visual Studio Code with devcontainer extension

⚠️ Do not install the Snap variant as hardware access can be limited

Usage

This repo will live next to your zephyr repository in your workspace. Therefore you need to create your workspace folder first and then clone this repository into it.

workspace
└── zephyr-school-devcontainer

1. Create a folder to be your zephyr workspace mkdir workspace
2. Switch to that folder cd workspace
3. Clone this repository git clone ...
4. Open the just cloned folder with VS Code
5. If not prompted select Reopen in Container from the command palette
6. Wait for the container to be pulled and created

From the devcontainer.json file the workspace is automatically setup with a Zephyr SDK container, additional tools and some useful extensions to work with Zephyr. The Zephyr SDK container version is provided as a build argument for the Dockerfile. After the container is built thepost-create.sh is executed automatically to pull the given Zephyr upstream version and setup some paths.

The setup process will take some time as a few GBs are fetched from remote locations so the time is highly dpendend on your internet connection speed. For example with a 50 MBit/s connection the download of the 6 GB container will take around 15 mins and pulling all the Zephyr sources also 5 mins. So time for a good coffee break. Also this is a one-time effort so the next time you start your workspace it shouldn't take a noticeable time compared to other applications.

After all the setup is done your folder structure should look liked

workspace
├── .venv
├── .west
├── bootloader
├── modules
├── tools
├── zephyr
├── zephyr-school-devcontainer
├── .clang-format
└── .clangd

Test the toolchain

Open a new terminal in VS Code. Make sure the Python virtual environment is activated (it is configured to do this automatically). This is indicated by a prepended (.venv) to your terminal prompt. The output looks like:

user@0356b1301ab4:/workspace$ source /workspace/.venv/bin/activate
(.venv) user@0356b1301ab4:/workspace$

On a fresh install this might not always be the case but reloading the window also restarts the extensions and will apply the settings. This is done by using the Developer: Reload Window command from the command palette. The command palette can be accessed either with the default shortcut Ctrl + Shift + p or by usign the menu View -> Command Palette.

Select a board of your choice from all the boards Zephyr supports out of the box

west boards

Build the hello-world application for it. For example for a Nordic nRF52840 DK:

west build -p auto -b nrf52840dk/nrf52840 zephyr/samples/hello_world

After the build is done (takes a few seconds on modern hardware) the output should look like:

-- west build: building application
[1/144] Preparing syscall dependency handling

[2/144] Generating include/generated/zephyr/version.h
-- Zephyr version: 4.2.0 (/workspace/zephyr), build: v4.2.0-26-g8b5e0388cf34
[144/144] Linking C executable zephyr/zephyr.elf
Memory region         Used Size  Region Size  %age Used
           FLASH:       18588 B         1 MB      1.77%
             RAM:        4480 B       256 KB      1.71%
        IDT_LIST:          0 GB        32 KB      0.00%
Generating files from /workspace/build/zephyr/zephyr.elf for board: nrf52840dk
(.venv) user@0356b1301ab4:/workspace$