Moving Design to a New Computer

[Sheldon01]

I have a design in VS Code that works fine on a Windows 10 computer (original development was done here).  Because I spend so much time waiting for my compute to compile my designs, I decided to buy a much faster computer (with Windows 11).  I've copied the entire director that contained my old design to the new computer but now I get errors on power complaining that a needed file is not there (but the file i,s indeed, there).  Any thoughts?  I'm stuck (and I need to get moving quickly again).

Thanks!

[Sheldon01]

I think I know what might be going on.  I need files in the same exact place as they were the first time.  Sorry for the post.  It was so obvious once I thought about it more.

[runsiv]

Hi Sheldon

Its great to hear that you figured out the issue. I would also suggest that you look into using WSL together with VScode as it from my experience compiles something like 40-50% faster then a standard windows build. If not I would suggest setting up a devdrive and place both your sdk, toolchain and project folder there. On my end it decreased the compile time with about 30% in the tests I did when I tested it earlier this year(I still use it on my Windows computer). 

The fasted setup is to use Linux but as you may not be familiar with it or depended on other applications I would either use WSL or devdrive. The build time is not to bad on single image build, but when you start with multi-image build I would not hesitate to use one of the mentioned setups. 

Regards

Runar

[Sheldon01]

Hi Runar,

I shouldn't have been so excited about my solution because I am now finding that there are still problems.  Somehow when I copy the entire path from the previous computer, it still is missing some configurations or settings.  I had two builds on my old computer and neither of them show up on my new computer.  Where did they go?!   I then created another build configuration and I was able to get the design be built.  However, the design does not work on my board and I have no idea why.  Why can't there be one directory (or file) that holds everything for a project?  It seems like there should be some kind of migration assistant that can help in moving from one computer to another.  I am very frustrated with the system as it is taking me days to just get up on running on a new computer.

Sheldon

Hold on...I am now thinking there was something wrong with the files I copied...don't respond yet

[runsiv]

Hi 

I'm sorry to hear that. How had you set up your environments? I think the easiest way would be that you on the orignal computer generate a cmake preset file, which you can generate by selecting the save configuration as preset. 

Which will generate a file looking something like this

{
    "version": 2,
    "cmakeMinimumRequired": {
        "major": 3,
        "minor": 20
    },
    "configurePresets": [
        {
            "name": "build_1",
            "displayName": "Build for NRF5340 DK NRF5340 application MCU",
            "generator": "Ninja",
            "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/build_1",
            "cacheVariables": {
                "NCS_TOOLCHAIN_VERSION": "NONE",
                "BOARD": "nrf5340dk_nrf5340_cpuapp",
                "CACHED_CONF_FILE": "$env{ZEPHYR_BASE}/../nrf/samples/bluetooth/mesh/chat/prj.conf",
                "hci_ipc_EXTRA_CONF_FILE": "$env{ZEPHYR_BASE}/../nrf/subsys/bluetooth/mesh/hci_ipc_child_image_overlay.conf;$env{ZEPHYR_BASE}/../nrf/subsys/partition_manager/partition_manager_enabled.conf"
            }
        }
    ]
}

I normally use git for version control so I would include this file in the version control and exclude the build folder as that is not something you need to transfer to the new computer. On the new computer just download the SDK and extentions as normal. Clone your project from git and open it in VScode. 

When you create a new build configuration you should now see the option to use the Pre-fill from preset

Regards

Runar

[Sheldon01]

I would like to use version control but I don't see any examples.  I do not understand how I would clone my project from git (or how to get it there in the first place).