Background
M1 Mac support for nRF Connect SDK tooling is currently lacking, with the nRF Connect app, VS Code plugins and command line tools not working with the default setup and installation instructions.
There have been many threads from different Nordic customers confirming these issues. I would implore Nordic to fix these issues as soon as possible as it is unprofessional that these issues persist 18 months after public availability of M1 machines, particularly with no solution or public timeline for a fixoffered by Nordic. I chose Nordic for my first commercial hardware projects in part due to the tooling available, so I'm pretty disappointed.
After days of debugging, I have managed to get the nRF Connect app, VS Code plugins, and nrfjprog working, and working concurrently. To give Nordic credit, this is in part due to updates made that appear to have fixed some of the issues related to M1 support.
Problem
All of the tools use nrfjprog to interact with hardware using SEGGER JLink libraries. Some of these tools run natively in an native arm context, and some use Rosetta to emulate Intel architecture. The tools need to use nrfjprog with the version of the JLink librarary appropriate to the current architecture.
| M1 JLink | Intel JLink | |
| nRF Command Line Tools (inc. nrfjprog) | Yes | No |
| nRF Connect for Desktop | No | Yes |
| nRF for VS Code extensions | Partial (GUI elements) | Partial (tasks run in terminals) |
If the wrong library is used, a error is produced stating that nrfjprog can't load the library:
Solution
Install JLink for both ARM and Intel processors in seperate folders. Use a wrapper script for nrfjprog to specify the correct JLink library for the current architecture.
Detailed instructions
- Install nRF Connect for Desktop, nRF Command Line Tools and nRF for VS Code as normal
- Download and install SEGGER JLink ARM Version from www.segger.com/.../
- Move /Applications/SEGGER to /Applications/SEGGER_ARM
- Download and install SEGGER JLink Intel Version ("64-bit Installer") also from https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink/
- Move /Applications/SEGGER to /Applications/SEGGER_x86_64
- Create a bin folder in your home directory
- Add /Users/USER/bin to your path, where USER is your username, by adding export "PATH=/Users/USER/bin:$PATH" to your shell profile/ rc file
- Create a wrapper script called nrfjprog in /Users/USER/bin with the following contents:
#!/usr/bin/env basharch=`arch`if [ "$arch" == "arm64" ]thenSEGGER_ARCH=ARMelseSEGGER_ARCH=x86_64fiexec /usr/local/bin/nrfjprog --jdll /Applications/SEGGER_${SEGGER_ARCH}/JLink_V764d/libjlinkarm.7.64.4.dylib $@ Run chmod +x /Users/USER/bin/nrfjprogat a terminal to make the wrapper script executable
Post
Hopefully this works for others experiencing problems. It's unclear if I have missed anything as I don't have a fresh machine to try this on. Please let me know if this works for you.
Nordic may be able to temporarily fix these issues by applying the same approach of manually specifying the JLink library on any calls to nrfjprog. It is worth noting that if they do this, it will break the above fix, as the --jdll paramter will be specificied twice which nrfjprog does not accept.
