How to FULLY UNINSTALL nRF Connect SDK and SES on macOS?

Kind folks,

Automated tools like the nRF Connect SDK environment are wonderful when they work, but can be a Procrustean bed when they break or don't fit the exact requirements. Case in point: I've gone through installing and reinstalling nRF Connect SDK, SES and the VS extension at least half a dozen time in various combinations of automated and manual procedures. The goal was to merge two sample apps: nrf_dm from the new Nordic v1.9.1 SDK and the nrf_matrix_led example from within the zephyr repo and run the resulting app on a BBC Micro:Bit V2 (an nRF52833-based SBC). This involved many Kconfig and Device Tree issues. You can read about some of the details of my journey in an earlier ticket.

Suffice it to say that I've made multiple attempts to uninstall all of the related software, make sure I have cleared away any remnants, and reinstall nRF Connect, and SES (leaving VS code out of the discussion for the moment) all of this running on the absolutely latest macOS Monterey 12.3. I have failed in this endeavor several times. Multiple pieces of "trash" (prior state) seem to remain. For example, when a freshly installed SES is started by clicking on the Open SES, the SES app opens, showing a dashboard which shows a list of recent project (not a blank list). Then either upon executing the File | Open nRF Connect Project... command, or automatically without any user interaction, the new nRF Project dialog pops up with a covering error message:

Closing the error message leaves an unresponsive options pane.

So, clearly there's some remembered state from prior installs that's preventing a new installation from being done cleanly. Searching for uninstall instructions for nRF Connect SDK yielded no useful information. Even searching for uninstallation instructions for SES yields only one suggestion, which proved to be insufficient and didn't erase prior project history. Therefore, I request:

An uninstaller tool for nRF Connect, its plugins (e.g., tool manager), any "embedded" SES IDE inside it's tool collection, and any other remnants of nRF Connect, or
At least a list of files and directories that need to be deleted to effect a complete uninstallation, and
Probably too much to ask for at the current moment, but it sure would be useful to have a description of the process by which "New nRF Connect Project..." does its work inside SES (including critical script files, locations, etc.)

Thanks for any advice. I am truly stuck and unable to proceed otherwise.

Parents

0 Mike Wirth over 3 years ago

I have started. to install nRF Connect for Desktop on another MacBook Pro. It's an older 5,3 model, but running a clean installation of macOS Monterey. Hopefully, installation here, if it's different from my MBP 10,1 will help me diagnose the problems I'm seeing.

Installation on the MBP is not yet complete. Here are two issues encountered along the way:

Automatic SDK installation cannot be done. When a newly installed nRF Connect app is installed and launched, the plugins selector window opens, but, is totally blank/gray. This is probably due to a graphics patch in macOS to allow it to run on this older machine. So ignoring this problem for the moment.

But it does mean that I needed to revert to the manual SDK installation instructions for this test. Did so. All proceeded correctly and a full set of repositories, and tools were installed -- all the way to the end of installation instructions, just before first use of SES or VS Code.

Except for one item, which has been experienced on all macOS installations. Despite what's (implied?) in the documentation, there is no command line launcher for west. West is not an app, but a Python module. Normally in such cases, there is a small executable app, a stub, which when started launches the module. I've found no such stub in the west directory or related files. Am I missing something?

As noted in the attached terminal log, "west" is not a recognized command, but "python -m west" (i.e., invoking it as a module) works everywhere.

mike@Mikes-MBP-53 ~ % west --help
zsh: command not found: west
mike@Mikes-MBP-53 ~ % python -m west --help
usage: west [-h] [-z ZEPHYR_BASE] [-v] [-V] <command> ...

The Zephyr RTOS meta-tool.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            get help for west or a command
  -z ZEPHYR_BASE, --zephyr-base ZEPHYR_BASE
                        Override the Zephyr base directory. The default is
                        the manifest project with path "zephyr".
  -v, --verbose         Display verbose output. May be given multiple times
                        to increase verbosity.
  -V, --version         print the program version and exit

built-in commands for managing git repositories:
  init:                 create a west workspace
  update:               update projects described in west manifest
  list:                 print information about projects
  manifest:             manage the west manifest
  diff:                 "git diff" for one or more projects
  status:               "git status" for one or more projects
  forall:               run a command in one or more local projects

other built-in commands:
  help:                 get help for west or a command
  config:               get or set config file values
  topdir:               print the top level directory of the workspace

Cannot load extension commands; help for them is not available.
(To debug, try: "west manifest --validate".)

Run "west help <command>" for help on each <command>.
mike@Mikes-MBP-53 ~ %

Surprising that this issue doesn't cause more extensive problems. At the moment it has halted my progress with the manual SDK next step, setting up SES. I need to enter the pathname of the west executable in the SES configuration, but there is no such file apparent.

FYI, here's the structure of the west package, as reported by pip:

mike@Mikes-MBP-53 ~ % pip3 show -f west 
Name: west
Version: 0.12.0
Summary: Zephyr RTOS Project meta-tool
Home-page: https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/west
Author: Zephyr Project
Author-email: [email protected]
License: UNKNOWN
Location: /Users/mike/.asdf/installs/python/3.10.2/lib/python3.10/site-packages
Requires: colorama, packaging, pykwalify, PyYAML, setuptools
Required-by: 
Files:
  ../../../bin/west
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/INSTALLER
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/LICENSE
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/METADATA
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/RECORD
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/REQUESTED
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/WHEEL
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/entry_points.txt
  west-0.12.0.dist-info/top_level.txt
  west/__init__.py
  west/__main__.py
  west/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/__main__.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/build.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/cmake.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/commands.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/configuration.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/log.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/manifest.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/util.cpython-310.pyc
  west/__pycache__/version.cpython-310.pyc
  west/app/__init__.py
  west/app/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-310.pyc
  west/app/__pycache__/config.cpython-310.pyc
  west/app/__pycache__/main.cpython-310.pyc
  west/app/__pycache__/project.cpython-310.pyc
  west/app/config.py
  west/app/main.py
  west/app/project.py
  west/build.py
  west/cmake.py
  west/commands.py
  west/configuration.py
  west/log.py
  west/manifest-schema.yml
  west/manifest.py
  west/util.py
  west/version.py
  west/west-commands-schema.yml
mike@Mikes-MBP-53 ~ %

Do you have a quick suggestion for this west executable issue? If not, I won't be able continue testing on this alternate MacBook Pro.

Thanks,

Mike

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