Command-line Zephyr meta-tool

[carlescufi]

This issue covers a meta-tool that would run from the command-line in order to build, flash, run, simulate, integrate, etc Zephyr-based images.

Motivation

West is to be added to the Zephyr project to fulfill two fundamental requirements:

• The ability to work with multiple Git repositories
• The ability to provide a user-friendly command-line interface to the Zephyr
  build system and debug mechanisms

Fundamental design constraints

• Building, flashing and debugging must remain compatible with raw CMake
• One must always be able to drop back to raw command-line (not using the meta-tool directly, although the tool must be installed) and continue working
• The tools will be written in Python, and split into libraries when possible/adequate

Basic scope

• Multiple repository management, including fetching and updating repositories that have known integration with Zephyr, such as MCUboot, OpenThread and others.
• Build, flash, debug, run
• Bootloader integration. Including image signing, image flashing (with offset) and building the bootloader itself
• Advanced emulator support, including potentially networking setup with QEMU

Extended scope

• Multi-core applications (Improve Multi Core support #3066)
• Console
• Firmware update
• Device Management

Scope of the CMake build system (with the help of the tool):

• Building
• Flashing (raw at address 0x0)
• Debugging
• Basic emulator usage

---

Features and Commands to be supported:

• bootstrap
• init
• sync (update repositories from remotes named in manifest) @ulfalizer
• branch
• diff
• status
• build (TBD, no multi-image support yet) @mbolivar

[carlescufi]

Name poll.
Reminder: Zephyr is a western wind.

• washoe explanation
• vayu explanation
• breeze
• wind
• vind
• west
• zeph
• zippy
• zool (Zephyr Tool)
• zmt (Zephyr Meta Tool)
• zp
• zt
• zctl (Zephyr control, eventually we could have zmgr later for management )

[mbolivar]

"zippy"?

$ grep ^z.*p.* /usr/share/dict/american-english 
zap
zap's
zapped
zapper
zapper's
zappers
zapping
zaps
zephyr
zephyr's
zephyrs
zeppelin
zeppelin's
zeppelins
zip
zip's
zipped
zipper
zipper's
zippered
zippering
zippers
zippier
zippiest
zipping
zippy
zips

[jhedberg]

• zool (for Zephyr tool)
• zmt (Zephyr meta-tool)
• zp
• zt (Zephyr Tool)

I think we'd want to keep it short (say, max 4 chars), neither of the shortest two character proposals above were found at least in my Linux distro.

[carlescufi]

I like the idea of a 4-letter name, so I will add a few to the list, including Johan's

[pfalcon]

I think we'd want to keep it short (say, max 4 chars)

I'd think we want to keep it clear for people and non-conflicting with the previous generations of tools which smartly wanted to make it short. Existing zephyr-env.sh takes a good lead in that.

Thus, zephyr-tool seems like an obvious choice.

[henrikbrixandersen]

ztool?