(the Docker image is build against nRF Connect SDK main
,v2.5-branch
,v2.4-branch
,v2.3-branch
,v2.2-branch
,v2.1-branch
, and v2.0-branch
every night.)
This project defines a Docker image that contains all dependencies to run west
commands with the nRF Connect SDK. Bind mount the project folder you'd like to build, and the output will end up in the same folder (nested in build/zephyr subdir of the app).
The aim is to provide an example for a Docker image that can compile application and samples in a nRF Connect SDK release branch, not to exactly replicate the software configuration used when the release was made.
More specificially, the purpose of this project is not to provide stable images, but replicate what users are facing when they start developing with nRF Connect SDK (which itself does not provide a reproducible build environment). This is mitigated by the Toolchain Manager, which is available for command line usage.
However, provisioning an environment with the toolchain and an updated west environment still takes considerable time (around 10 minutes). Especially with matrix builds this will quickly add up. Therefore this project shows how to dockerize a ready-to-use west build
command.
If you want stable Docker images or have custom needs, use the Dockerfile in this repository as an example to build your own Docker image.
For Matter applications, check out nrfconnect-chip-docker.
Install docker
on your operating system. On Windows you might want to use the WSL subsystem.
You can either build the image from this repository or use a pre-built one from Dockerhub.
Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/NordicPlayground/nrf-docker
Build the image (this is only needed once):
cd nrf-docker
docker build -t nrfconnect-sdk --build-arg sdk_nrf_version=v2.5-branch .
Note
To build for a Mac with the M1 architecture, you need to specify the arm64
architecture when building: --build-arg arch=arm64
.
Note
The sdk_nrf_version
build argument can be used to specify what version of the nRF Connect SDK that will be used when looking up dependencies with pip for the SDK and it's west dependency repositories. The value can be a git tag, branch or sha from the nRF Connect SDK repository.
Note
This is a convenient way to quickly build your firmware but using images from untrusted third-parties poses the risk of exposing your source code. There is no guarantee (e.g. cryptographic signature) about what this image contains. When publishing the image this project only ensures through automation that it can be used to build nRF Connect SDK examples. The entire image creation and publication is automated (build on GitHub Actions, and served by Dockerhub), which means there are multiple systems that can be compromised, during and after publication. No human is involved in verifying the image. In addition Docker images are not deterministic. At build time, dependencies are fetched from third-party sources and installed. These dependencies could also contain malicious code. If you are using this image you must be aware that you are using software from many untrusted sources with all the consequences that brings.
Note
The prebuilt images are not available for arm64
architecture (Apple M1), because GitHub Actions don't have hosted runners with Apple M1 yet.
To use the pre-built image nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk:main
; add nordicplayground/
before the image name and :tag
after. Replace tag
with one of the available tags on the Dockerhub image. The only difference between the tags are which Python dependencies are pre-installed in the image based on the different requirements.txt
files from the nRF Connect SDK repository's west dependencies.
docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/workdir/project nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk:main ...
The rest of the documentation will use the local name nrfconnect-sdk
, but any of them can use nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk:main
(or a different tag) instead.
To demonstrate, we'll build the asset_tracker_v2 application from the nRF Connect SDK:
docker run --rm \
-v ${PWD}:/workdir/project \
-w /workdir/nrf/applications/asset_tracker_v2 \
nrfconnect-sdk \
west build -p always -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns --build-dir /workdir/project/build
The firmware file will be located here: nrf/applications/asset_tracker_v2/build/zephyr/merged.hex
. Because it's inside the folder that is bind mounted when running the image, it is also available outside of the Docker image.
Note
The -p always
build argument is to do a pristine build. It is similar to cleaning the build folder and is used because it is less error-prone to a previous build with different configuration. To speed up subsequent build with the same configuration you can remove this argument to avoid re-building code that haven't been modified since the previous build.
To build a stand-alone project, replace -w /workdir/nrf/applications/asset_tracker_v2
with the name of the applications folder inside the docker container:
# run from the build-with-nrf-connect-sdk
docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/workdir/project \
nrfconnect-sdk \
west build -p always -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns\
# build docker image
git clone https://github.com/NordicPlayground/nrf-docker
cd nrf-docker
docker build -t nrfconnect-sdk --build-arg sdk_nrf_version=v2.5-branch .
cd ..
This builds the hci_uart
sample and stores the hci_uart.hex
file in the current directory:
docker run --rm nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk:main \
-v ${PWD}:/workdir/project \
west build zephyr/samples/bluetooth/hci_uart -p always -b nrf9160dk_nrf52840 --build-dir /workdir/project/build
ls -la build/zephyr && cp build/zephyr/zephyr.hex ./hci_uart.hex
# Init and build in Docker
docker run --rm nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk:main \
-v ${PWD}:/workdir/project \
west build zephyr/samples/bluetooth/peripheral_ht -p always -b nrf52840dk_nrf52840 --build-dir /workdir/project/build
# Access build files
cp build/zephyr/zephyr.hex peripheral_ht.hex
ls -la ./peripheral_ht.hex
The image comes with ClangFormat and the nRF Connect SDK formatting rules so you can run for example
docker run --name nrfconnect-sdk -d nordicplayground/nrfconnect-sdk tail -f /dev/null
find ./src -type f -iname \*.h -o -iname \*.c \
| xargs -I@ /bin/bash -c "\
tmpfile=\$(mktemp /tmp/clang-formatted.XXXXXX) && \
docker exec -i nrfconnect-sdk clang-format < @ > \$tmpfile && \
cmp --silent @ \$tmpfile || (mv \$tmpfile @ && echo @ formatted.)"
docker kill nrfconnect-sdk
docker rm nrfconnect-sdk
to format your sources.
Note
Instead of having clang-format
overwrite the source code file itself, the above command passes the source code file on stdin to clang-format and then overwrites it outside of the container. Otherwise the overwritten file will be owner by the root user (because the Docker daemon is run as root).
docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/workdir/project \
nrfconnect-sdk /bin/bash
Then, inside the container:
cd nrf/applications/asset_tracker_v2
west build -p always -b nrf9160dk_nrf9160_ns
...
Meanwhile, outside of the container, you may modify the code and repeat the build cycle.
Later after closing the container you may re-open it by name to continue where you left off:
docker start -i nrfconnect-sdk