How to capture changes to zephyr/mcuboot in source control?

[BDA]

I have a VS Code project that is a Workspace Application where I've had to make some modifications to code in both zephyr and mcuboot directly.  My codebase is in a git repository, but the zephyr and mcuboot directories are themselves git repositories.  This appears to be a fundamental aspect of how the west build system works, and it is not happy when I try to remove their .git folders to get their files included in the surrounding repository.

Since I can't push my personal changes to those sub-repositories, someone else checking out the codebase won't get my changes, as they aren't tracked by my main repository.

What is the recommended way to maintain source control in a situation like this?  Can I rework the west build system to not completely break when I remove those .git folders?  Or to maybe get it to apply a local git patch to them when they're first pulled?

[Øivind]

Hi,

In this situation I would recommend that you fork the repositories you would like to modify, sdk-zephyr and sdk-mcuboot in your case.
Then you can add a west.yml to ncs which blocks these repositories from being included by nrf/west.yml and gets your fork instead. For example:

ncs/.west/config:

[manifest]
path = foo
file = west.yml

[zephyr]
base = zephyr

ncs/foo/west.yml:

manifest:
  projects:

    - name: nrf
      url: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf
      revision: v1.9.1
      path: nrf
      import:
        name-blocklist:
          - zephyr
          - mcuboot

    - name: zephyr
      url: https://github.com/USER_NAME/sdk-zephyr
      revision: v2.7.99-ncs1-1-modified
      import:
        # In addition to the zephyr repository itself, NCS also
        # imports the contents of zephyr/west.yml at the above
        # revision. Only the projects explicitly named in the
        # following allowlist are imported.
        #
        # Note that the zephyr west extensions (like 'build', 'flash',
        # 'debug', etc.) are automatically provided by this import, so
        # there's no need to add a redundant west-commands: key for
        # the zephyr project.
        #
        # Please keep this list sorted alphabetically.
        name-allowlist:
          - TraceRecorderSource
          - canopennode
          - civetweb
          - cmsis
          - edtt
          - fatfs
          - fff
          - hal_nordic
          - hal_st
          - libmetal
          - littlefs
          - loramac-node
          - lvgl
          - lz4
          - mbedtls
          - mipi-sys-t
          - nanopb
          - net-tools
          - nrf_hw_models
          - open-amp
          - psa-arch-tests
          - segger
          - tinycbor
          - tinycrypt
          - tf-m-tests
          - zscilib
          
    - name: mcuboot
      url: https://github.com/USER_NAME/sdk-mcuboot
      revision: v1.8.99-ncs1-modified
      path: bootloader/mcuboot

You will have to modify the above ncs/foo/west.yml file to have the correct urls and revisions for your forks.

Then you should get your forks when you run 'west update' in ncs/nrf.

[BDA]

Ah okay, thanks!