Microtalk

How to Leverage Dev Containers for Quick and Easy Zephyr OS Development Setup

Stefano Fiorentino

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17:50

EOC 2024

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Stefano Fiorentino

Stefano is a professional engineer in Telecommunication Engineering. He started developing software in MATLAB and C for a ray-tracing and earth subsurface tomography, a cluster computing solution. Then he moved working with Qt and C++ for a GUI-based subsurface imaging product. After a really nice period with plain Modern C++ in a financial cluster computing institution, he encountered the Yocto Project and never left it. He is currently Head of the Competence Center Embedded Systems at the consulting firm adesso Schweiz AG. Father of two daughters, high-handicapper golf player, host at C++ User Group Lugano and ISO C++ Committee Member, co-founder of Italian Embedded.

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Topics Covered

Debugging Microcontroller RTOS Tools

Microtalk

How to Leverage Dev Containers for Quick and Easy Zephyr OS Development Setup

Stefano Fiorentino

17:50 EOC 2024

Stefano Fiorentino

17:50

Unlock the potential of rapid Zephyr OS development through strategic utilization of Dev Containers. Learn to expedite environment setup with precision, fostering a streamlined and efficient workflow.

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What is the main reason Stefano recommends using Dev Containers for Zephyr OS development setup?

A To provide a reproducible, shareable development environment that speeds onboarding and can be used for continuous integration

B To avoid using Dockerfiles entirely and rely only on VS Code settings

C To guarantee you never need to rebuild the environment again regardless of changes

D To eliminate the need for CMake, West, and the Zephyr SDK on any machine

E To encourage every developer to set up a unique environment tailored to their personal preferences

According to the presentation, where should you put the installation of the Zephyr SDK, required tools, and the initial project build so new developers don’t repeat those manual steps?

A In the Dev Container's Dockerfile so the image installs tools and runs an initial build once

B Only in a README so each developer runs manual install steps themselves

C Only in the CI pipeline but not in the Dev Container

D In VS Code workspace settings so the editor will install system packages automatically

E Inside each developer's home folder as a personal script they must run

Why does Stefano mount his ~/.ssh folder into the Dev Container (via devcontainer.json)?

A To reuse the same SSH keys inside the container so it can access private repositories

B To speed up Docker image builds by sharing compiled object files

C To grant the container access to the host's GUI and display settings

D To automatically sync the entire home directory and all dotfiles into the container

E To bypass the need for any git configuration inside the container

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Upvotes Newest Oldest

rocendob

Score: 1 | 2 years ago | 1 reply

Could you share your recipe if you are able to debug the target from inside the container using a USB debug probe?

fiorentinoingSpeaker

Score: 0 | 2 years ago | no reply

My setup is very convoluted. But the following should be sufficient to have a debug console:

west debugserver --build-dir path/to/build/directory

In my case the result looks like:

Remote debugging using :3333
z_arm_reset () at /home/dev/zephyrproject/zephyr/arch/arm/core/cortex_m/reset.S:119
119 movs.n r0, #_EXC_IRQ_DEFAULT_PRIO
(gdb)

My target is currently a STM32F411E-DISCO with Windows+WSL2+Custom Docker Image, in the video it is qemu to keep it simple. Are you interested in more details?

Nathan3

Score: 2 | 2 years ago | 1 reply

Are you able to easily debug actual hardware using devcontainer ?

fiorentinoingSpeaker

Score: -1 | 2 years ago | no reply

Debug is too late :) Jokes apart, I'm currently working on a Windows machine, so I agree the integration with usbipd shall improve. Thanks for the comment!

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