VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Monkeytronics — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:42:22 GMT

Not sure if useful to you, but due to the extreme flakiness of flashing and debugging in the nrf connect VS Code extension, I wrote a few lines to allow use of custom build & flash etc scripts:

...

"nrf-connect.taskBindings": {
         "eraseAndFlash": [
            {
               "taskName": "Monkey Script"
            }
         ]
      }
   },
   "tasks": {
      "version": "2.0.0",
      "tasks": [
         {
            "type": "nrf-connect-shell",
            "label": "Monkey Script",
            "command": "base=$(cygpath '${workspaceFolder}') && bash \"${base}/z-prod-utils/scripts/monkey_flash.bash\"",
            "cwd": "${activeConfig}",
            "problemMatcher": []
         }
      ]
   },

and then in the script (just a bash script) - you can do whatever the hell you like.

## Get 
build_folder=$(dirname $(pwd))
domain_name=$(basename $(pwd))
build_folder_name=$(basename ${build_folder})


echo "========================================="
echo "Monkey Flash Script"
echo "========================================="
echo ""
echo "App build Location  : $(pwd)"
echo "App domain_name     : ${domain_name}"
echo "build_folder        : ${build_folder_name}"
echo ""


echo "========================================="
echo "Flashing to nRF9151DK"
echo "========================================="
echo "std command = west flash -d ${build_folder} --domain ${domain_name} --dev-id 1051278334"
echo "========================================="
echo ""
echo "our command = west flash -d ${build_folder} --domain ${domain_name} --recover"
echo "========================================="
echo ""
west flash -d ${build_folder} --domain ${domain_name} --recover
echo ""

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

jakkra — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 09:09:06 GMT

Ok got it. Feel free to close the ticket.

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Simonr — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 09:07:10 GMT

Hi Jakob

Just wanted to give you an updated on this. There is no immediate release coming to the VS Code plugin for this feature I'm afraid, so for now you will be restricted to using the command line west flash tool.

Please contact the Nordic sales rep. of your region to get information on when it can be expected in the VS Code plugin.

Best regards,

Simon

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

jakkra — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:34:09 GMT

Fantastic :) Now just need to be able to feed those arguments from VSCode Plugin :)

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Menon — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:05:38 GMT

Hello,

See this commit for the issue you have reported.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Menon — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 10:40:39 GMT

Hello,

We are working on this and I have created an internal ticket to track the bug you reported. I will keep you updated here. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Kind regards,
Abhijith

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

jakkra — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 21:25:14 GMT

Hi, yes this I tried before, but AFAIK I can't get the actual selected build folder there hence not a good solution.
I need to dynamically the folder and device id like this, I do not want to hard code it.
west flash -d build_folder --dev-id dev_id_corresponding_to_this_build_folder

Anyway I patched Zephyr to not do erase of external flash for now so we are good until both VSCode (1. (Bug)) and west flash (2. (Feature request)) are fixed.

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Menon — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 12:44:17 GMT

Hello,

Until the upcoming release, a possible workaround is to create a task of type nrf-connect-shell instead of nrf-connect-flash, specify the full west flash command with the required arguments, and then bind that task to the build configuration.

{
   "label": "My Custom Flash Task",
   "command": "west flash --erase-mode=all --ext-erase-mode=none",
   "type": "nrf-connect-shell"
}

"nrf-connect.taskBindings": {
      "flash": [
        {
          "taskName": "My Custom Flash Task",
          "buildConfigs": ["${workspaceFolder}/build"]
        }
      ]
    }

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

RE: VSCode Plugin Erase and Flash without erasing external flash. west flash --erase without erasing QSPI flash

Menon — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:16:35 GMT

Hello,

Sorry for the delay in responding to this issue. I wanted to check internally before getting back to you.

[quote user=""]

(Feature request) There is no way in VSCode Plugin to in a generic way add this. (when above is fixed)

I want to use the vscode task type "nrf-connect-flash" as it automatically knows the active app, build dir. etc. So as far as I know there is not way to manually create shell command that calls west flash manually with those arguments that work for any application in the plugin.

This is what I want:

{
"type": "nrf-connect-flash",
"label": "Custom Flash with Erase",
"config": "${activeConfig}",
"erase": true,
"softreset": false,
"args": ["-erase-mode=all", "--ext-erase-mode=none"], //<- Appends extra args to west flash, not supported by plugin today
"problemMatcher": []
}

Alternatively adding the external flash config to the VSCode Plugin such as "erase" and "softreset" already are. Probably the better way.

The reason this is important i that for us is we want to flash with --erase as it's much faster as we use pretty much whole nRF5340 flash. Doing a sector erase is much slower ~30 seconds compare to chip erase ~few seconds only. So without --erase each flash during development adds like ~25 seconds.

Now since the change (commit referenced earlier) --erase also wipes the full external flash, which takes 2 minutes for us and also all content is gone. We save resources on external flash that takes ~60 seconds to upload there.

[/quote]

We are already working on this, and you can expect the feature in an upcoming release, although I don’t have a clear timeline to share at the moment.

I will also get back to you regarding the other question you asked.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith