Asking for a good way to improve existing drivers on nRF Connect SDK

[rmarques]

Hello, we've been using nRF5 SDK and nRF5 SDK for Mesh for about 5 years now and we're looking to port our codebase to nRF Connect SDK.

We have already started the process using Zephyr but we would like to continue on the nordic way of things.

One of the things we had to do on Zephyr to fit our use case was to improve the ethernet chip driver with some functionalities that we needed and were not yet supported by Zephyr. We are keeping a version controlled folder separate from the main Zephyr repo with this and other files that we're changing as we see fit.

Still, I was hoping there would be a better way of doing this, such as keeping some files inside the workspace we use in VSCode that would be used by the compiler before using the ones on the Zephyr folder, but I'm not sure if this is possible or even if it makes any sense.

Is there something we can do similar to this or is it better to just keep an inhouse fork of the nRF Connect SDK repo?

Thank you.

[Hieu]

Hi rmarques,

Referring to our documentation on development workflow, it seems you are using Workflow 2, with a repo for a standalone application.

To have changes on SDK files, the recommended approach is to use Workflow 3 or Workflow 4.

There is a way to replace SDK files with external files using the project's CMakeFiles, compatible with Workflow 2. When the changes are too small compared to the work to setup and maintain Workflow 3 or 4, this can be considered.

I recently also discussed this topic in this DevZone case:  How to apply changes to an nRF Connect SDK driver file from a Workspace App Repo? 

Hieu