Installing nRF Connect for Desktop on macOS with APFS file system,?

[Mike Wirth]

Folks,

System Info: MacBook Pro (10,1; 15" Retina, Early 2013), Running macOS 10.15.6 "Catalina", with 500GB SSD, formatted with APFS, into a RO system partition and a R/W data partition.

I have gone through multiple sessions of attempting to install Nordic Connect for Desktop on the above system using both the nRF Connect app, Getting stated Assistant (official, v1.0.8) and the manual procedure documented online.  Here are some observations about that process:

• Using the Getting Started Assistant, Section 1 proceeds without problem and all "Verify" tests yield positive results.
• GSA. Section 2, is where troubles start:
  • pip3 install west runs fine (or appears to).

  • Actually a more detailed version of this command and checking afterwards reveals a potential problem.  Because of the read-only setting of the system partition, the installer script for west doesn't install it for all users in /.local/bin/ or /bin/sh/ but rather in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/lib/python3.8/site-packages.

  • Subsequently, west works just fine when invoked from the command line, but when run from inside other scripts, those scripts fail to find the executable.  (Adding this directory to the PATH search path appeared to solve this in some cases of west calls inside other scripts, but I did not test this exhaustively)
    
  • Now (with or without adding to the PATH variable), all of the "Verify" button presses in the other GSA Section 2 steps yield red /bin/sh: west: command not found responses, even though the command lines in each step appear to have functioned correctly.
• GSA Section 3 proceeded without problem to download and install Segger Embedded Studio.
• GSA Section 4, setting Tools > Options > nRF Connect tab settings were done without problem (with the appropriate change to the actual path for west).  
  • In the next step, Select File > Open nRF Connect SDK Project, these settings were tried repeatedly for multiple boards and the asset tracker sample app, but...
  • ...in all cases, when the "Click OK to open the project" was done and the configure and build scripts were run, they would fail in multiple and curious ways

Questions:

1. Has anyone succeeded in installing nRF Connect for Desktop on macOS Catalina (or a Big Sur beta) with an APFS-formatted system disk?  If so, what do I need to do to get around the above listed issues?
2. Out of curiosity, when I've successfully completed this installation, do I have a full "base" installation of Zephyr (i.e., without all the optional modules), or do I need to go back and complete the Zephyr installation?

TIA,

Mike

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Mike,

Has anyone succeeded in installing nRF Connect for Desktop on macOS Catalina (or a Big Sur beta) with an APFS-formatted system disk?  If so, what do I need to do to get around the above listed issues?

You can see from the error that there is a problem with west not being in the path. I also had issues with this, but got it working by installing (and managing) python via pyenv, as described here.

Out of curiosity, when I've successfully completed this installation, do I have a full "base" installation of Zephyr (i.e., without all the optional modules), or do I need to go back and complete the Zephyr installation?

Yes. If you follow the guide you will check out all repositories that are needed, including the full Zephyr repo. That is all handled for you by the west tool. (For instance, "west init -m github.com/.../sdk-nrf --mr v1.3.0" will check out the full nRF Connect SDK 1.3, including Zephyr, mcuboot and a large number of other repositories).

Einar

[Mike Wirth]

Many thanks, Einar.  Will give this a shot and see how it works.

Have passed your Python3 installation recommendations along to several friends who are heavy Python aficionados and teachers.

Mike

[Mike Wirth]

OK, reinstalled my Python 3.8.5 environment using pyenv as advised.  Got further, but still had the following issues:

1. Had to reboot to get the new Python environment to work properly.  Simply starting a new terminal window was insufficient.
2. Section 2 of Getting Started Assistant verifications still fail; west is not installed in /bin/sh.  No matter.
3. Got all the way to the final step of opening an NRF Connect SDK project and got the following error dialog.  What setup stage, etc., am I missing?

Thanks,

Mike

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Mike,

I do not immediately see what the problem is here. Did you make sure to select the non-secure when opening the project (board ending with "ns")? Which NCS version are you using? Does building from the command line work ("west build -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160ns")?

Einar

[Mike Wirth]

Thanks for the quick response, Einar.  Responding to your comments:

• non-secure?  I only see four sample applications: asset_tracker, connectivity_bridge, nrf_desktop, and serial_lte_modem, none with an ns suffix.

• NCS version? Keep downloading the latest.  The verify step in the Getting Started Assistant reports "nrf_connect_sdk-0.1.5-1 verified successfully"
  
  
• Building from the command line? Your suggestion, "west build -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160ns", fails immediately with:
  

  mike@Mikes-MacBook-Pro-10-1 ~ % west build -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160ns 
  usage: west [-h] [-z ZEPHYR_BASE] [-v] [-V] <command> ...
  west: error: argument <command>: invalid choice: 'build' (choose from 'init', 'update', 'list', 'manifest', 'diff', 'status', 'forall', 'help', 'config', 'topdir', 'selfupdate')
  mike@Mikes-MacBook-Pro-10-1 ~ % west -V
  West version: v0.7.3
  mike@Mikes-MacBook-Pro-10-1 ~ % 

  That is, "build" appears not to be a legal west command. Also, there is no "nrf9160dk_nrf9160ns", board, but there is a "nrf9160dk_nrf9160 board.

Currently at a standstill.  Any hints?  Diagnostics I can run?

Mike