VS Code integration

[andrewboie]

Visual Studio Code is a really nice development environment, even someone such as myself who has stuck with vim for many years is considering switching over to it.

It would be cool if we could provide some documentation and/or VS Code extensions to make VS Code more zephyr-aware. This ticket can be a catch-all for integration tasks/ideas. So far I can think of:

• Best way to get tab settings correct across different file types in Zephyr
• Somehow populate header information to provide those definitions only provided by Kconfig, so we can correctly see what preprocessor directives are active, right now they are all greyed out for CONFIG_* variables. Probably need to be able to set what board/project configuration we are building for.
• Integration for interacting with west
• Integration for running CMake and doing builds for a particular project directory
• Interactive debugging to connected hardware
• Integration to run an emulator (and interactively debug it if desired) for QEMU or other emulation targets
• Some kinds of lintian checks can be shown directly in the editor GUI - wonder if we could integrate checkpatch into this

Other ideas, please comment!

[ulfalizer]

For Kconfig, it's because autoconf.h is included automatically:

zephyr/CMakeLists.txt

Line 214 in 9d5d252

toolchain_cc_imacros(${AUTOCONF_H})

Would need to either include it manually where it's needed or tell VS Code about it somehow.

cmake/ide/eclipse_cdt4_generator_amendment.cmake seems to already have some stuff related to autoconf.h.

[andrewboie]

Would need to either include it manually where it's needed or tell VS Code about it somehow.

We'd need to generate it too, since it's a build artifact that depends on the selected board and defconfig.

Same deal with DTS #defines, syscalls, bunch of other stuff.

[nashif]

On Kconfig: https://github.com/luveti/kconfig-vscode

[erwango]

Another nice improvement would be to enable search across modules, which I haven't been able to get working so far (while it is somewhat documented).

[nashif]

* Best way to get tab settings correct across different file types in Zephyr

This should already be supported using the .editorconfig file we have in the tree. That works for me. Alternativly, you could set this directly:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/settings#_language-specific-editor-settings

[markusr]

There is a closed issue #17645 with some configs for vscode. Maybe it helps.

[sigvartmh]

I would also add that some default configuration for https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=marus25.cortex-debug would be helpful for the people developing with ARM architecture.

I'm pretty sure this is what platform.io uses with some improvements https://platformio.org/platformio-ide

So having some support for

• OS level awareness for debugging in VS code is also an improvement.

[joerchan]

CC: @trond-snekvik Maybe you have some input here?

[trond-snekvik]

I actually made a couple of extensions improve my workflow with Zephyr:

• DeviceTree for the Zephyr project adds syntax highlighting, type checking, code completion, go to defintion and syntax checking to deviceTree files, written specifically for the Zephyr RTOS.
• Kconfig for the Zephyr project adds highlighting, code go to definition and completion for Kconfig and .conf files, as well as type checking, basic linting and syntax validation for .conf files.
• vscode-doxygen-generator is a generic Doxygen header API generator for C. It improves syntax highlighting for doxygen tags, and adds a snippet generator for doxygen comments (Place your cursor on a function definition, and press Ctrl+Q).
• GNU Linker Map files adds syntax highlighting and symbol listing for GNU map files. Tested with Zephyr's map files, using GCC 9.3.1.

[carlescufi]

One more potentially useful repo with info by @bus710:
https://github.com/bus710/zephyr-rtos-development-in-linux

[brooksprumo]

I've had some good luck using VS Code and its support for Language Server to do intellisense stuffs by having CMake generate a compilation database (that VS Code then consumes automatically, assuming the build directory is in the project).

The CMake parameter is CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS, and here's examples of building an app:

west build -b <board> <app directory> -- -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=1

If you always want to generate the compilation database, you can also do:

west config build.cmake-args -- -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON

[sslupsky]

Here is a helpful setting in my workspace c_cpp_properties.json:

"compileCommands": "~/Documents/source/blinky/build/compile_commands.json"

I also found some helpful information here:
https://gitlab.endian.se/simon/vscode-zephyr-intro

In particular, the forced includes and defines to get IntelliSense to work properly:

"forcedInclude": [
                "~/Documents/source/blinky/build/zephyr/include/generated/autoconf.h",
                "~/Documents/source/zephyrproject/zephyr/include/toolchain/zephyr_stdint.h",
                "~/Documents/source/blinky/.vscode/c_cpp_undef.h"
],
"defines": [
                "BUILD_VERSION=v2.1.0-rc1-141-g3cc5bda2fa10",
                "KERNEL",
                "_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2",
                "__PROGRAM_START",
                "__ZEPHYR__=1"
],

[sslupsky]

Also add this to your CMakeLists.txt for your project:

set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS ON)

[sslupsky]

CMake can be configured to generate a compile_commands.json. However, the file is for the application which leads to problems when you open a component of the Zephyr RTOS into vscode. For instance, if I open drivers/i2c/i2c_sam0.c I will see an error that there is no target for that file. This is true since the compilation of the OS is controlled by other CMake processes. Vscode opens the file and parses using the include paths and forced includes and defines specified in the config file.

What would be useful here is to be able to generate the compile_commands.json file for all the other Zephyr RTOS related files. That way, vscode would be able to open and parse any of the OS files (drivers, kernel, subsystems, modules, etc). At the moment, I have to rely on the Include paths and forced includes and defines in my config. These could be eliminated all together if I could get the compile_commands.json for all the components of Zephyr.