VSCode Getting Started Template

A simple CMSIS-Pack based example to setup and test VS Code development environment for Alif Ensemble kits.

• The solution consists of two projects

  • blinky is a bare bone LED blinker
  • hello demonstrates retargeting printf() to UART

• Arm GNU toolchain is used as a default. There are build-type options for IAR and ARM compiler armclang for reference.

  • You can find the compiler specific settings in cdefault.yaml
  • TIP: The tools loaded by Arm Environment Manager are configured in vcpkg-configuration.json.
  • To download armclang you can add "arm:compilers/arm/armclang": "^6.22.0" to the "requires" object.

Note about Ensemble gen1 support

The default main branch is set to support Gen 2 Ensemble devices. "gen1" branch must be used for older Gen 1 devices.

Quick start

First clone the template project repository

git clone https://github.com/alifsemi/alif_vscode-template.git
cd alif_vscode-template
git submodule update --init

OR

git clone --recursive https://github.com/alifsemi/alif_vscode-template.git

To build the template for a supported board other than the DevKit, you have to update the board.h file to pick the right variant of the board. By default the template will build for gen2 DevKit.

The required software setup consists of VS Code, Git, CMake, Ninja build system, cmsis-toolbox, Arm GNU toolchain and Alif SE tools. By default the template project uses J-link so J-link software is required for debugging. In addition to build tools the VS Code extensions and CMSIS packs will be downloaded automatically during the process.

To make environment setup easier this project uses Arm Environment Manager for downloading and configuring most of the tool dependencies. Basically only VS Code, Alif SE tools and J-Link software need to be downloaded and installed manually.

NOTE: Please see the Readme_Arm_Environment_Manager.txt file first if you would like to manage where the tools are installed.

Opening the project folder with VS Code automatically suggests installing the extensions needed by this project:

• Arm Environment Manager
• Arm CMSIS csolution
• Cortex-Debug
• Microsoft C/C++ Extension Pack

After setting up the environment you can just click the CMSIS icon and then the context and build icon to get going.

For Alif SE tools and J-link debugging support add the following entries to VS Code user settings.json (Press F1 and start typing 'User')

{
    "alif.setools.root" : "C:/alif-se-tools/app-release-exec",
    "cortex-debug.JLinkGDBServerPath": "C:/Program Files/SEGGER/JLink/JLinkGDBServerCL.exe"
}

More detailed getting started guide

Please refer to the Getting started guide