[TOC]
The devicetree is made out of different dts and dtsi files, gets aggregated
into a single zephyr.dts
file and generates a devicetree_generated.h
header
with all the definitions used by the DT_
macros.
The build system lists the various overlay files specified by BUILD.py
, for
example:
-- Found devicetree overlay: /mnt/host/source/src/platform/ec/zephyr/program/brya/adc.dts
-- Found devicetree overlay: /mnt/host/source/src/platform/ec/zephyr/program/brya/battery.dts
-- Found devicetree overlay: /mnt/host/source/src/platform/ec/zephyr/program/brya/cbi_eeprom.dts
-- Found devicetree overlay: /mnt/host/source/src/platform/ec/zephyr/program/brya/fan.dts
...
Useful artifacts (always present):
Aggregated devicetree file, after all the overlays, preprocessor and
gen_defines.py
:
build/zephyr/$PROJECT/build-ro/zephyr/zephyr.dts
Main devicetree output, flat representation of the tree and various node
references, including ordinals of dts_ord_...
structs:
./build/zephyr/$PROJECT/build-ro/zephyr/include/generated/devicetree_generated.h
For more details see: CMake configuration phase
/ {
a-node {
subnode_nodelabel: a-sub-node {
foo = <3>;
label = "SUBNODE";
};
};
};
/
is the root nodea-node
anda-sub-node
are node namessubnode_nodelabel
is a nodelabelfoo
is a property,3
is the valuelabel
is a property,SUBNODE
is the value
NOTE: subnode_nodelabel
is a nodelabel, label
is a label property.
Code can have hardcoded nodelables, so sometimes it's useful to add extra nodelabels to an existing node (referenced by another nodelabel). To do that add an overlay with something similar to:
another_node_label: &subnode_nodelabel {
};
This happens when some code refer to a device using DT_DEVICE_GET
, but the
corresponding struct device
is not instantiated, either because the driver
has not been enabled or because of a devicetree misconfiguration (missing
status = "okay"
).
Quick fix: find what device is causing the issue (look into
devicetree_generated.h
) enable the corresponding driver (CONFIG_...=y) or fix
the devicetree.
Proper fix: find the code referencing to the undefined node, make sure that the
corresponding Kconfig option depends on the subsystem being enabled (ADC,
I2C...), make sure that the specific platform driver is enabled based on the
devicetree (default y
and depends on DT_HAS_...
).
The CONFIG_..._LOG_LEVEL
symbols are not defined directly (i.e. there's no
Kconfig config ..._LOG_LEVEL
), they are generated using the
subsys/logging/Kconfig.template.log_config
template.
Quick fix: enable the logging subsystem (normally CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_LOG_MODE_MINIMAL=y
in the project prj.conf
), or change the code so
that the driver builds without this config.
Fix: make the driver depends on the logging subsystem being enabled (depends on LOG
) or change the code to compile with CONFIG_LOG=n
.
Sometimes it's useful to run the menuconfig
target on a specific project,
this can be done with:
ninja -C build/zephyr/$PROJECT/build-ro menuconfig
This exposes all the available options from the various Kconfig fragments and can be useful to validate that config constraints are working correctly.
For example, searching for ^SSHELL$
(using the /
key) shows:
Name: SHELL
Prompt: Shell
Type: bool
Value: y
Symbols currently n-selecting this symbol (no effect):
...
Symbols currently y-implying this symbol:
- CROS_EC
- PLATFORM_EC
Many compiler and linker error are very uninformative if LTO is enabled, for
example a missing struct device
can show as
/tmp/ccCiGy7c.ltrans0.ltrans.o:(.rodata+0x6a0): undefined reference to `__device_dts_ord_75'
Adding CONFIG_LTO=n
to the corresponding prj.conf
or building with zmake build <project> -DCONFIG_LTO=n
usually results in more useful error messages,
for example:
modules/ec/libec_shim.a(adc.c.obj):(.rodata.adc_channels+0x58): undefined reference to `__device_dts_ord_75'
GCC errors on macros include macro expansion by default. This usually results
in a wall of errors that makes it very hard to identify the actual problem. For
these situations it's useful to disable macro expansion entirely by setting
CONFIG_COMPILER_TRACK_MACRO_EXPANSION=n
, for example by building with:
zmake build <project> -DCONFIG_COMPILER_TRACK_MACRO_EXPANSION=n
The buildsystem can be configured to leave the build artifact next to the
object files, this is useful to inspect the macro output. To do that use the
zmake
flag:
zmake build --save-temps $PROJECT
or for unit tests:
./twister -x=CONFIG_COMPILER_SAVE_TEMPS=y
This leaves a bunch of .i
files in the build/ directory.
For more information see: Look at the preprocessor output.
This is also useful to analyze assembly errors, for example
/tmp/cctFuB4N.s: Assembler messages:
/tmp/cctFuB4N.s:1869: Error: missing expression
becomes
zephyr/CMakeFiles/zephyr.dir/misc/generated/configs.c.s: Assembler messages:
zephyr/CMakeFiles/zephyr.dir/misc/generated/configs.c.s:1869: Error: missing expression
The zephyr.elf
output file can be used with gdb to analyze all the statically
allocated structures, for example:
$ arm-none-eabi-gdb build/zephyr/$PROJECT/output/zephyr-ro.elf
(gdb) p fan_config
$1 = {{pwm = {dev = 0x100ad244 <__device_dts_ord_169>, channel = 0, period = 1000000, flags = 0}, tach = 0x100ad43c <__device_dts_ord_172>}}
(gdb) p __device_dts_ord_172.name
$3 = 0x100ba480 "tach@400e1000"
If the symbol has been optimized, try rebuilding with CONFIG_LTO=n
.
Unit tests running on native_posix
produce an executable file that can be
rebuilt directly with ninja to save time, and run with GDB to help out
debugging. This can be found after a twister run in the twister-out
directory. For example:
$ ./twister -v -T zephyr/test/hooks
...
INFO - 1/1 native_posix hooks.default PASSED (native 0.042s)
...
# Modify the test code
$ ninja -C twister-out/native_posix/hooks.default
...
[7/7] Linking C executable zephyr/zephyr.elf
$ ./twister-out/native_posix/hooks.default/zephyr/zephyr.elf
...
PROJECT EXECUTION SUCCESSFUL
$ gdb ./twister-out/native_posix/hooks.default/zephyr/zephyr.elf
Reading symbols from ./twister-out/native_posix/hooks.default/zephyr/zephyr.elf...
(gdb) b main
Breakpoint 1 at 0x80568a9: file boards/posix/native_posix/main.c, line 112.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /mnt/host/source/src/platform/ec/twister-out/native_posix/hooks.default/zephyr/zephyr.elf
Breakpoint 1, main (argc=-17520, argv=0xffffbc24) at boards/posix/native_posix/main.c:112
112 posix_init(argc, argv);
...