BazelCProjectCreator: A Python repository from Intelligent Embedded Systems Department, University of Duisburg-Essen - Intelligent Embedded Systems Department, University of Duisburg-Essen

Bazel Project Creator

A python3 script that realizes easy creation of bazel projects for embedded c. Run

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/es-ude/BazelCProjectCreator/master/create_bazel_project.py \
  | python - MyProject

or for systems mainly using python2 you need to explicitly choose python3 with

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/es-ude/BazelCProjectCreator/master/create_bazel_project.py \
  | python3 - MyProject

to create a the new project MyProject.

Please note that the project name must not contain dashes, dots or spaces since the bazel synchronization will fail in that case. Illegal characters will be replaced by an underscore. For more information about workspace names klick here.

If the folder MyProject already contains files, the script will fail, to prevent accidentally overwriting files. For more information on the Bazel Build Tool see https://bazel.build. For more information on the Bazel Scripts used in the created project see https://embeddedsystemsbuildscripts.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

For a list of available targets run

$ bazel query //...

The project will contain the following directory hierarchy

Project/
  app/
  | setup/
  docs/
  Project/
  src/
  test/

Each directory serves a specific purpose. The role of your source files will depend on where you put them. The main principle here is keep your code in separate parts as follows

library: with public headers in Project and all other files in src
documentation: in docs
applications: every file in app represents an executable application, the setup folder for initialization routines that shall be shared between applications.
tests: unit tests go into the test folder

Applications

All files in app/ are expected to be *.c files containing a main function. Each file will correspond to a buildable cc_binary target. Assuming you created the file app/main.c you can run

$ bazel build app:main --platforms @AvrToolchain//platforms:ElasticNode_v3

to build a .hex file for the elastic node platform. The file will be located at

bazel-bin/app/main.hex

You can see a list of available platforms by running

$ bazel query 'kind(platform, @AvrToolchain//platforms:*)'

or define your own platform (see here)

A target can be flashed by using the bazel run command. In order to do that, you need to append _upload to the target name. The end of the command requires a positional argument, that specifies the port of the programmer, i.e.

$ bazel run app:main_upload --platforms @AvrToolchain//platforms:ElasticNode_v4 -- /dev/ttyACM0

More information regarding that, can be found here.

Documentation

To help you getting started with the documentation for your new project, we include setup files for Sphinx. The documentation files are written using reStructuredText. For an overview of the markup we recommend the reStructuredText Primer.

To allow including information from doxygen comments in your header files we use the breathe plugin. E.g. use

... doxygenfile: YourHeader.h

to include the doxygen output of YourHeader.h into your documentation. More available commands can be found at https://breathe.readthedocs.io/en/latest/directives.html.

To build the documentation run

$ sphinx-build -T -b html docs docs/_build

from your workspace root. The output can then be found at docs/_build/.

Prerequisites

Linux or MacOS
gcc or clang
bazel >= 0.25
avr-gcc
avr-binutils
avr-libc
dfu-programmer

For automated test runner generation

ruby

For documentation

doxygen
Sphinx
breathe (sphinx plugin)