"Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 07:57:32 GMT

Hi Chris!

[quote user="pearson"]An additional problems with the Toolchain Manager is that it does not put any of the installed tools onto the path. (Windows 10 at least.) So, while it may have installed west, it cannot be used easily.[/quote]

This is something I've also noticed, but I have forgotten to report internally when looking through our bugs. I believe we're mixing due to the launch of toolchain manager, and the manual setup via getting started.

I will report this!

[quote user="pearson"]

Here's another comment for you regarding the SDK setup.

I must have missed this the first time through, but the start of the "Getting Started Assistant" v1.1.2 has a big deprecation warning:

Deprecation warning

For nRF Connect SDK v1.2.0 (and later), this app has been replaced by the Toolchain Manager app. Go to the app overview to install and open the Toolchain Manager.

However, the nRF Connect SDK documentation clearly directs the user to use the Getting Started Assistant. Obviously there is a conflict there.

[/quote]

Yes, this is correct. We have bundled the whole SDK (incl. deps) in the toolchain manager, but we clearly have improvements to do here.

The layout of where you would normally click, here highlighted:

These are, atleast in my mind, the path of least resistance when looking at heading/sub-headings.

By only looking at the left-hand frame, my mind assumes that this is the proper way: "I want to get started, install, and here's an assistant"

However, that is unfortunately not the simplest way to get started at this time. I'll work together with our technical writers to improve upon this.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 18:17:00 GMT

Hi Håkon Alseth. Here's another comment for you regarding the SDK setup.

I must have missed this the first time through, but the start of the "Getting Started Assistant" v1.1.2 has a big deprecation warning:

Deprecation warning

For nRF Connect SDK v1.2.0 (and later), this app has been replaced by the Toolchain Manager app. Go to the app overview to install and open the Toolchain Manager.

However, the nRF Connect SDK documentation clearly directs the user to use the Getting Started Assistant. Obviously there is a conflict there. 🙂

An additional problems with the Toolchain Manager is that it does not put any of the installed tools onto the path. (Windows 10 at least.) So, while it may have installed west, it cannot be used easily.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 17:17:07 GMT

Håkon Alseth, I'm glad it's appreciated!

Here's another quick note about the Bluetooth Low Energy app under Windows 10. It would be nice if it had a more advanced filter system, so it could be set to filter out some of the common devices from Google, Apple, Windows, etc.

I've found that the "brand" icons next to the discovered devices in the Android nRF Connect app are useful, in that the unusual ones stand out easily. Extending that idea to simply filtering out the plethora of Google, Apple, Windows, etc. devices would help with the clutter, especially in the cases where the MAC address of device of interest isn't known.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 14:39:02 GMT

Hi Chris,

This is gold to us!

I will create individual bug reports / feature improvements internally on the different subjects.

Again, thank you very much for taking the time to help us out. I hope you have a wonderful day!

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 16:55:56 GMT

You're welcome, Hakon! I'm a strong believer in having easy to use tools to help transition developers who are new to a platform.

Here are some comments about the "Getting Started Assistant" and the setup documentation, plus one note about the SEGGER SES Nordic Edition. These aren't huge problems but, given how the Assistant is trying to be a "friendly" setup system, they are things that could be polished up. My setup was done under Windows 10.

Step #1 has the user open an admin command prompt. Step #3 "Get the nRF Connect SDK code" could use a note about switching back to a regular user cmd.exe prompt.
- The problem is that the Getting Started Assistant could be running in regular user mode, and if some software was already installed for that user only (such as git), the Getting Started Assistant will verify that the software is there but it will not actually be available in an admin command prompt.
- This happened to me. I already had git installed in user mode, and the Getting Started Assistant flagged it as good, but of course it didn't work in an admin command prompt.
The online documentation developer.nordicsemi.com/.../gs_assistant.html talks about the "Variables" section, but doesn't point out that the empty fields highlighted in red can be ignored at first. It also doesn't clearly state that the "ncs_tag" can be ignored if not working with a tagged release of the nRF Connect SDK.
"The nRF Connect for Desktop" method of install does not mention installing Chocolatey, and the "Getting Started Assistant" refers the user to the manual setup. It seems a bit odd for the automated setup to refer to the manual setup, so perhaps Chocolatey should have its own section?
Getting Started Assistant, step 2, shows a Linux `PATH` `export`, not a Windows `setx`. (I did the setup under Windows, with the Windows Getting Started Assistant.)
- `pip3 install west`
- `export PATH="$PATH:/$HOME/.local/bin"`
When starting SEGGER Embedded Studio as described in the first section of Step #7, the Getting Started Assistant should probably state that the first "nRF Connect Options" dialog box that opens should be closed as the next step will deal with those settings.
There's no mention of the Nordic directory that will be created for the Embedded Studio data files. This seems like a good directory to unzip the IDE into, just to keep everything neat.
The "Open nRF Connect SDK Project / nRF Connect Options" dialog box will fail in a few ways related to using the root of a Windows drive. The particular use case is working through examples and using an alternate build directory to avoid adding to the SDK directories.
- If the build directory is the same as what is currently open in SEGGER Embedded Studio
- If the root of an empty drive is chosen as the build directory. The use case here was using a RAM drive.
- If a "build" directory was created, such as `d:\build` for one project, and the root of that drive is used for the next project, nRF Connect Options won't outright fail and whatever already existed inside `d:\build` will be used for the project.

I don't know if the visiting product manager is responsible for nRF Connect as well, and perhaps this could be passed on if not:

A couple of notes for the Bluetooth Low Energy app under Windows 10:

There doesn't seem to be any way to copy the MAC address from a device in "Discovered devices".
- This could be a very useful feature, especially for setting the filter
It would be nice to have a toggle checkbox next to the filter to turn it on and off. Currently the filter text has to be removed to turn off the filter.
- The use case here is for when a device isn't showing up in the scan and the user would like to quickly check if the filter is incorrect. The user might then make corrections in the code and want to simply turn the filter back on.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 11:59:36 GMT

Hi Chris!

I have made our product manager aware of this specific devzone thread, so just feel free to add your comments to this thread.

Again, I have to thank you for taking the time to help us improve on these topics, as we do aim to ease the process of installing dependencies (sdk, toolchain, etc) and helping to make the process take as little time away from you, the developer, so that you can focus on developing and running firmware instead.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 17:56:19 GMT

Ah, good to know, thanks Håkon Alseth!

I do actually have a bunch of notes regarding the setup process through the nRF Connect for Windows "Getting Started Assistant". I ran into a few problems and, given how "friendly" that assistant is, they're things that should probably be taken care of to polish it up a bit. Where should such a list be sent?

Thanks!

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 14:09:13 GMT

I believe you're right.

I will add this to the docs improvement list! Thank you very much for reporting this back to us!

Note that this is the equivilant to running "menuconfig" (or "guiconfig") from command line. Please note that the changes you do is only valid for your specific build folder, and not saved into the prj.conf file.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 15:28:30 GMT

Hi Håkon Alseth. While we're talking about documentation, another thing I ran into is the configure tool in the "Project->Configure nRF Connect SDK Project" menu. I don't think it's mentioned in the documentation at all, but it's definitely a useful tool.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 07:51:38 GMT

Hi,

I agree with you. This should be clearly outlined in our documentation.

I'll report this internally so that the team(s) are aware of this.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 15:16:56 GMT

Håkon Alseth, it might be a good idea to update the documentation to specify which examples have the tags. Being new to the nRF Connect SDK, it would not have thought that some of the examples would not be properly configured for SES.

While the documentation does state that "The CMakeLists.txt files for the sample applications in the nRF Connect SDK are tagged as required.", and the nRF Connect Options dialog does show the projects as "Getting Started | Zephyr", it does not seem to be obvious that those examples are not Nordic's Zephyr examples. After all, they're being configured by Nordic's nRF Connect Options, so one might assume they are fully configured for SES.

Also, from the point of view of someone new to SEGGER Embedded Studio itself, it isn't apparent that "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" and "Add Existing File To CMakeLists.txt" are Nordic additions to SES.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Chris Pearson — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 15:09:15 GMT

Thank you, Håkon Alseth! That was the fix.

Just in case someone else has this question: the project also needs to be refreshed for those menu items to appear.

RE: "Add New File To CMakeLists.txt" option missing

Håkon Alseth — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 08:47:48 GMT

Hi,

For a project to be able to add files to the CMakeListst.txt file, they need this tag:

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/1.5.1/nrf/gs_modifying.html#ses-tags-in-cmakelists-txt

Projects in the sdk-nrf all have these tags, but zephyr samples does not, unfortunately. In that case, the tags need to be manually added to the CMakeLists.txt.

Kind regards,

Håkon