nrfutil pkg extreemly slow on mac

[Hjalmar]

Hi,

using nrfutil pkg to generate the settings.hex file for the DFU is exceptionally slow on my M2.

I'm using what I believe is the latest version 

nrfutil 7.5.0 (063f665 2023-05-11)
commit-hash: 063f665c8ef5e4d46167077b52d39cf4e66ca24f
commit-date: 2023-05-11
host: aarch64-apple-darwin
build-timestamp: 2023-05-11T07:48:35.836017Z
classification: nrf-external

Is this expected?

Is this the latest version?

Running it on linux it's a couple hundred ms to finish, where on osx it's 15 seconds.

[Susheel Nuguru]

Hjalmar,

The team do not have the capacity (with time or resources) to test this at the moment. No clear timelines are available when this will be tested and fixed. And according to NCS about OS support: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/nrf-connect-desktop/page/os_support.html MacOS 12 is Tier 3 "Tier 3: The tools are supported by design, but are not built or tested after each change. Therefore, the application may or may not work.

[Hjalmar]

Yes, but as I've written I use mac OS 13, and that one according to your list is tier 1.
Tier 1: The tools will always work. The automated build and automated testing ensure that the tools build and successfully complete tests after each change.
and obviously its not.

So, just to make things very clear.

You will not support to make your tool work properly on a brand new mac?

[Susheel Nuguru]

Sorry Hjalmar, I was testing it on MacOS12 version and got stuck to this version in my head. Forgot that you are using MacOS 13 and it is very likely that this issue is there on that as well. 

OK, this is a bug that we need to investigate, but we do not have resources to do that right away. I will create an internal ticket to the team to fix this. 

Hjalmar said:

You will not support to make your tool work properly on a brand new mac?

We will support the tools on new Macs as the document shows in that table. This is a bug.

[Hjalmar]

Yes, but your reply indicates that you have no plan or time when this bug is going to be fixed or did I misunderstand your reply?

[Susheel Nuguru]

Sorry for confusing you as it was confusing for me as well I have now got a very clear answer from the dev team.

nrfutil pkg is related to our legacy DFU solution for the deprecated nRF5 SDK. That is, nrfutil pkg development is stopped. So we will not prioritize or support any issues in this. I can still create an internal ticket as this is infact a bug, but I cannot promise if this will be fixed anytime soon, if they fix it all. 

[Hjalmar]

Ok, as we still develop 100% of all our nrf52 (22,32, 33 40) in the old sdk and within the next frew years won't switch, is there any way we can get hold of the source code for this to fix it ourself? This bug means 24 seconds extra every build (once for settings once for generating the zip) when we debug.

[Hjalmar]

Hi, This is getting out of hand. Is there any way we can use an older nrfutil that doesn't have this bug? How do I install older versions of this tool?