Twister cannot find custom out-of-tree board

[cedric.gerber]

I have a custom board based on nRF5340 with nRF7002 WiFi (duplicated from nrf7002dk board definition). The board
builds successfully with west build, but Twister cannot find it.

Setup:
- Custom board location: boards/roomz/RoomzDisplay/
- Board identifier: RoomzDisplay/nrf5340/cpuapp
- zephyr/module.yml contains: board_root: .
- Application location: projects/app/

board.yml

board:
  name: RoomzDisplay
  vendor: ROOMZ
  socs:
  - name: nrf5340
    variants:
    - name: ns
      cpucluster: cpuapp
    - name: nrf7001
      cpucluster: cpuapp
      variants:
      - name: ns

This builds ok:
west build -b RoomzDisplay/nrf5340/cpuapp -s projects/app

But this fails
west twister -T tests/ -p RoomzDisplay/nrf5340/cpuapp
# ERROR: unrecognized platform - RoomzDisplay/nrf5340/cpuapp

I tried various things:
1. west twister --board-root .
2. BOARD_ROOT=/path/to/project west twister
3. Created tests/twister.yaml with board-root: ..

Twister works fine with Nordic's in-tree board:
west twister -T tests/ -p nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp

Question: How do I make Twister recognize my out-of-tree board?

Environment: nRF Connect SDK v3.1.1, Windows 10

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

Have you tried passing the "BOARD_ROOT" parameter to the twister application, as per its expected syntax listed here?

https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/develop/test/twister.html

 

Based on searches in zephyr's "issues" threads, this feature will require specific settings in zephyr/module.yml as well:

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/discussions/67674

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/issues/38047

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[cedric.gerber]

Hi, thanks for you reply!

Yes I did use "--board-root ." 

I just tried to duplicate my board directory to "C:\ncs\v3.1.1\zephyr\boards"

Now I get the error:

ERROR: Board(s): {'RoomzDisplay'}, defined multiple times.
Last defined in C:\workspace\gen3\boards\roomz\roomzdisplay\board.yml

This seems to indicate the board location is parsed correctly.

 

But when I remove the --board-root . I get:

ERROR   - platform_allow in RoomzDisplay.power.sleep - unrecognized platform - RoomzDisplay/nrf5340/cpuapp

 

I suppose the error is actually not due to being out of tree, but the parsing of the board files with twister? The build is ok.

I've tried to rename my .yml files to .yaml as I saw a comment saying it could cause issues. It did not help.

Any idea what could cause the issue?

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

You could try the same procedure with the custom board given in the example-application:

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/example-application

cedric.gerber said:

I just tried to duplicate my board directory to "C:\ncs\v3.1.1\zephyr\boards"

Now I get the error:

ERROR: Board(s): {'RoomzDisplay'}, defined multiple times.
Last defined in C:\workspace\gen3\boards\roomz\roomzdisplay\board.yml

You need to remove it from the zephyr/boards folder if you want to use it as a out-of-tree board.

cedric.gerber said:

I suppose the error is actually not due to being out of tree, but the parsing of the board files with twister? The build is ok.

I suspect this as well. I would recommend that you contact the zephyr community related to twister issues.

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[cedric.gerber]

Hi, thanks for the feedback. Do you know which community is the best? 

I opened a discussion in githhub: https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/discussions/99209

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

cedric.gerber said:

Do you know which community is the best? 

If you have issues reaching out to the community, it might be beneficial to join their discord server and ask there.

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[cedric.gerber]

Short update, I've finally found the issue, it was due to the naming of the files, it has to be yaml and not yml. (I thought I tried this, but got mixed up with the out of tree board files).

Would be nice to have the same parser mechanism for build and test : )