Bug report: 12.2.0 SDK many armgcc Makefiles have bad 'erase' commands.

[Robert Massaioli]

I would like to register a bug report with the nRF5 SDK version 12.2.0. If you look at the example code in the SDK you will find that every example has a different build configuration for the different development boards that Nordic Semiconductor make. For example, here is the 'blinky' example directory contents:

blinky.eww
hex
license.txt
main.c
pca10028
pca10031
pca10040
pca10056

For this example, I want to focus specifically on the 'pca10028' directory. If you look at the Makefile for the s130 soft device you see this:

tail pca10028/s130/armgcc/Makefile 
	nrfjprog --reset -f nrf51

# Flash softdevice
flash_softdevice:
	@echo Flashing: s130_nrf51_2.0.1_softdevice.hex
	nrfjprog --program $(SDK_ROOT)/components/softdevice/s130/hex/s130_nrf51_2.0.1_softdevice.hex -f nrf51 --sectorerase 
	nrfjprog --reset -f nrf51

erase:
	nrfjprog --eraseall -f nrf52

The problem is with the erase statement. It is attempting to erase an nrf52 device when clearly the pca10028 is a nrf51 device; as evidenced by the working command above.

I think that the erase command is incorrect for many of the examples and it would be good to fix that up accross the SDK. It is probably worth checking that this command is correct for all examples for all boards. Cheers.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

Thank you for reporting this. It looks like you are correct that this parameter is wrong for a lot of the pca10028 examples. I have created a patch file that should fix this for the pca10028 and pca10031 examples. Since support for nRF51 is dropped in SDK 13, I will not report this internally, as there will not be a new release of SDK 12.

I will update the patch if I find some errors with the pca10040 and pca10056 board.

nRF51_Makefile.patch

Best regards,

Jørgen

[pabigot]

Please reconsider the decision not to report this internally; if it had been, the problem might have been fixed in 12.3.0 released three months after this was reported. It would be nice to have it fixed if there's a 12.4.0.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

In fact I did decide to report it. The feedback I got was that this was fixed for SDK 13.0.0, but that it would not be visible (due to no support for nRF51). I'm not sure why the fix did not make it into SDK 12.3.0, but it might be because it was based on SDK 12.2.0, and the fixes might not have been implemented in this branch.

[pabigot]

OK: thanks. I have a bunch of nRF51-based devices so it would be great if the 12 series had an extended maintenance life that included patches like this.