Nordic Semiconductor has launched ‘nRF Connect for VS Code’, an extension pack that allows developers to use the popular Visual Studio Code integrated development environment (VS Code IDE) to develop, build, test and deploy embedded applications based on Nordic’s nRF Connect software development kit (SDK). The nRF Connect SDK is a development tool for building nRF53 and nRF52 Series short-range wireless and nRF91 Series low-power cellular IoT solutions.
This new extension turns VS Code into a complete IDE for developing applications on Nordic products and includes an interface to the compiler and linker, an RTOS-aware debugger, a seamless interface to the nRF Connect SDK and an integrated serial terminal, among other valuable development tools.
Powerful multi-platform IDE
VS Code is a lightweight, powerful IDE for macOS, Linux and Windows that combines the simplicity of a source code editor with powerful developer tooling. It has a strong ecosystem for extensions which makes it highly extensible. Easy customisation makes development with the IDE simpler, while an interactive RTOS-aware debugger allows the user to step through source code, inspect variables, examine threads, view call stacks and execute debugging commands in the console. VS Code has both an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) and a powerful full-blown command-line interface (CLI), combining the efficiency of a CLI and the convenience of a GUI.
The product is supplied as a bundle of extensions to enhance product development support. The pack includes: the main extension, nRF Connect for VS Code, which contains an interface to the build system and nRF Connect SDK, as well as external tools such as guiconfig; ‘nRF DeviceTree’ which provides DeviceTree language support and a convenient hardware overview display; ‘nRF Kconfig’, which provides Kconfig language support; and ‘nRF Terminal’, an integrated serial terminal for UART and RTT backends.
Simplifying wireless design
The pack aids and simplifies the design of new nRF-based applications based on a helpful set of examples from the nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr Project. Developers can customise their applications and define their own boards using a simple automation wizard within the Zephyr rule set. The DeviceTree viewer visualises the configured hardware and helps the developer navigate the DeviceTree source.
Migration of existing nRF Connect SDK applications to VS Code is made a straightforward task through tight native integration. With additional extensions from Microsoft for C/C++, or others for Git and many more, nRF Connect for VS Code provides a comprehensive one-stop shop development environment for designers working with Nordic’s wireless solutions.
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