Debugging Zephyr PSoC™ 6 programs with VSCode – Version 0.2

Components

Hardware

Name	Quantity
INFINEON PSoC6-BLE Pioneer Kit	1 or
INFINEON CY8CPROTO-062-4343W	1 or
INFINEON CY8CPROTO-062S2-43439	1 or
INFINEON CY8CPROTO-063-BLE	1

Software

Name	Quantity
Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop Image	1
Zephyr Getting Started	1
Zephyr Software Development Kit (SDK)	1
Infineon ModusToolbox™ Programming tools ModusToolbox Training (optional)	1 1
hal_infineon Binary Blobs (see instructions) VSCode VSCode setup files	1 1 1

Description

This project outlines the steps needed to start symbolic debugging of Zephyr programs in the VSCode IDE.

This project was developed under Ubuntu Linux, and has not been tested on OSX or Windows development platforms, however it should work on these platforms with minor modifications.

Installing the Zephyr RTOS and development system

Follow the steps at https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/develop/getting_started/index.html. This will setup your base Zephyr development system. The base includes necessary tools (cmake, python, devicetree compiler), and the necessary cross compiler (Zephyr SDK).

Note: I installed my Zephyr SDK at $HOME/.local/zephyr-sdk-0.16.5-1. If you elect one of the other options then you may need to edit the paths in settings.json with the appropriate path.

Installing necessary Infineon extensions

Once the standard zephyr development is setup you need a couple of Infineon specific additions. These are described in the zephyr documentation specific to your board. In my case I am using the CY8CPROTO-062-4343W board and the instructions are here: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/cypress/cy8cproto_062_4343w/doc/index.html

Execute the command

west blobs fetch hal_infineon

Install the Infineon version of openocd, In a browser goto https://softwaretools.infineon.com/tools/com.ifx.tb.tool.modustoolboxprogtools and download the programming tools for Linux. This will place a ModusToolboxProgtools_<version>.deb file in your Downloads directory (the file is about 75MB).

cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i ModusToolboxProgtools_1.0.0.714.deb #your file name may be a different version
rm ModusToolboxProgtools_1.0.0.714.deb

add the following lines at the end of your .bashrc file.

export PATH=/opt/Tools/ModusToolboxProgtools-1.0/openocd/bin:$PATH:~/.local/zephyr-sdk-0.16.5-1/arm-zephyr-eabi/bin
export ZEPHYR_BASE=~/zephyrproject/zephyr
export OPENOCD=/opt/Tools/ModusToolboxProgtools-1.0/openocd/bin/openocd

Some Handy Programs

I have found that terminal programs like putty, and teraterm often have difficulties when you connect and disconnect boards. I like the terminal program ‘tio’ for its simplicity. It defaults to the most common serial settings of 115,200, and 8N1 so there is no need to change these defaults.

sudo apt install tio
sudo apt install apt-transport-https

We will use tio later to monitor the serial output from the board.

If at some point in the future you update vscode with sudo apt upgrade you will need the apt-transport-https utility.

Creating a new sample program

To get started we will build a reasonably complex sample program, the Bluetooth observer. I will build my samples in the Documents directory.

cd ~/Documents
cp -r ~/zephyrproject/zephyr/samples/bluetooth/observer bluetooth_observer
cd bluetooth_observer
west build -b cy8cproto_062_4343w -- -DOPENOCD=$OPENOCD
west flash
tio /dev/ttyACM0

At this point tio should display the Bluetooth devices that the observer has seen nearby. Since tio started after the program started, you may not see the Booting message, simply press the reset switch on the board and restart the program, or you can open a second terminal window and leave tio running in it all the time. Here is what I see:

[tio 17:20:26] tio v1.32
[tio 17:20:26] Press ctrl-t q to quit
[tio 17:20:26] Connected
*** Booting Zephyr OS build zephyr-v3.4.0-1843-g68ee177a01f3 ***
Starting Observer Demo
Started scanning...
Exiting main thread.
Device found: 29:3D:1A:7B:A0:58 (random) (RSSI -51), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: DE:59:87:F3:7A:D6 (random) (RSSI -86), type 0, AD data len 14
Device found: 58:E7:BF:72:DF:C9 (random) (RSSI -89), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: 3D:7A:30:68:C9:E1 (random) (RSSI -69), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: 78:F8:F8:E7:F0:08 (random) (RSSI -84), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: F1:97:F3:14:25:CC (random) (RSSI -92), type 0, AD data len 21
Device found: 49:09:09:72:99:09 (random) (RSSI -93), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 4A:0A:0A:AA:D3:EF (random) (RSSI -94), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 76:85:FC:7F:2F:41 (random) (RSSI -98), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 78:E3:6D:8E:8D:5E (public) (RSSI -95), type 0, AD data len 19

So far we have installed zephyr, the zephyr SDK, and we have tested that we can build a complex program, load it to the board, and see results being produced. Now it’s time to move from command line development to an IDE with symbolic debugging.

Installing VSCode

To install the VSCode, download the .deb file for your architecture (x64, Arm32, arm64) from here: https://code.visualstudio.com/download. The download is quite large (~92MB) so it may take a while to download.

Then install VSCode deb package with the commands:

cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i ./code_1.82.1-1694163687_amd64.deb

Note the version you download will most likely be different than 1.82.1, change the version information to match what you downloaded. Once you have installed from the .deb file all future updates and re-installs can be done by running the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install code

Some Handy VSCode extensions When you start up VSCode you can add extensions. I have the following extensions installed, although I am not sure all are necessary:

Arm Assembly
C/C++
C/C++ Extension Pack
C/C++ Themes
Cortex-Debug
debug-tracker-vscode
Embedded Tools
MemoryView
Peripheral Viewer
Pylance
Python
Python Debugger
Python Environment Manager
RTOS Views
Serial Monitor
Vim

Adding VSCode configurations to the sample project

Before starting VSCode and opening the bluetooth_observer project we want to add some vscode configuration information to the observer sample. The configuration information will be in the .vscode subdirectory of ~/Documents/bluetooth_observer.

Fetch the vscode settings from github:

cd ~/Documents
git clone https://github.com/lawrencek52/vscode-infineon-psoc6-openocd.git

then copy the appropriate files into the .vscode subdirectory of ~/Documents/bluetooth_observer. Use the following commands.

cd ~/Documents/vscode-infineon-psoc6-openocd
cp -r .vscode ~/Documents/bluetooth_observer/

Starting VSCode and open the sample program

Start VSCode. You should have an icon like this in your applications tray. Since you will be using VSCode for development a lot it is probably a good idea to right click the icon and add it to your favorites list.

After starting VSCode you will see the IDE:

Open the bluetooth-observer by clicking “Open Folder” on the start menu, and selecting the directory Documents/bluetooth_observer.

Compile and start debugging the sample program

From the menu bar at the top of the VSCode window select Run->Start Debugging, or press F5. This will compile your sample program, load it to the board, and run to the entry point of main(). Finally, VSCode will display the code from main.c with the next line of code to be executed.

Starting the sample program

Before starting the sample program we need a terminal to monitor the serial output from the board. From the menu bar at the top of the VSCode window select Terminal->New Terminal, this will open a new terminal window at the bottom of the VSCode and show a bash command prompt. Start the tio program to monitor the serial output from the board:

tio /dev/ttyACM0

tio will start and connect to the board, typical output from tio is:

[tio 12:09:17] tio v1.32
[tio 12:09:17] Press ctrl-t q to quit
[tio 12:09:17] Connected

Now start the program by pressing the “play” icon in the top center of the VSCode window. The tio window will display the output from the sample program, this is what I see:

lawrence@Ubuntu22:\~/Documents/bluetooth\_observer$ tio /dev/ttyACM0
[tio 12:13:42] tio v1.32
[tio 12:13:42] Press ctrl-t q to quit
[tio 12:13:42] Connected
Starting Observer Demo
Started scanning...
Exiting main thread.
Device found: 27:5C:81:09:95:71 (random) (RSSI -75), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: 2B:BF:B8:75:CE:EB (random) (RSSI -39), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: F1:97:F3:14:25:CC (random) (RSSI -92), type 0, AD data len 21
Device found: CC:F4:11:86:2C:D9 (public) (RSSI -92), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 11:F9:8E:8F:AA:20 (random) (RSSI -93), type 3, AD data len 31
Device found: 44:05:A5:41:72:9A (random) (RSSI -98), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 6D:AD:AD:E2:EA:D5 (random) (RSSI -70), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: 7F:7F:FF:7E:76:F1 (random) (RSSI -92), type 2, AD data len 28
Device found: CD:9D:FC:15:9A:FE (random) (RSSI -83), type 3, AD data len 8

Adding breakpoints

At this point you can explore adding breakpoints, single stepping through code and examining the state of variables. In general, most of the time the sample program will be in cpu_idle.S waiting for Bluetooth activity. Explore and enjoy….

Notes:

I have only tested these instructions on an Ubuntu 22.04 system. There are hooks for running under Windows, but I haven’t tested them.

There are 3 boards listed, and the Bluetooth observer should work on all of them, but has only been tested on the CY8CPROTO-062-4343W board.

There are a few paths coded into the VSCode settings. I tried to move most of them into the settings.json file, but I may have missed one or two.

Feel free to send me a pull request or patch if you find errors in the various json files or in my instructions. I will be happy to update things as necessary.

https://github.com/lawrencek52/vscode-infineon-psoc6-openocd