nRF CMake

Simple CMake project setup for Nordic Semiconductor devices and ARM GCC.

This project is not maintained or supported by Nordic Semiconductor ASA.

See the example directory for an example of how a project can be set up.

Prerequisites

Requires the nRF5 SDK available at http://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF5_SDK/nRF5_SDK_v15.x.x/. Create an environmental variable named SDK_ROOT, and point it at the root directory of your copy of the nRF5 SDK, or pass the directory to CMake when generating build files: -DSDK_ROOT=<SDK-path>

Tools:

CMake version 3.6 or newer
ARM GCC 5.3 or newer (NOTE: 8-2018-q4-major is broken on Windows)
nRF5 Command line tools for flashing the applications.
On Windows: Ninja build

Building

To build a project, enter the project's top level directory and create a build folder.

Enter the build folder and call CMake:

cmake -G <generator> ..

to generate build files. On Linux, the generator argument can be skipped. This makes CMake generate GNU Makefiles. On Windows, Ninja provides the most reliable results, but depending on your environment, "MinGW Makefiles" should work as well.

Note that you only have to generate your build files once.

After CMake has generated the build files, you can build your project:

cmake --build .

You can see a list of available targets by calling

cmake --build . --target help

and build specific targets with

cmake --build . --target <target-name>

It's also possible to build using your chosen generator directly. Just call make, ninja, or whatever other generator you've chosen.

Both .elf and .hex files are generated for each application. The application files are named in a <NAME>_<DEVICE>_<CHIP_CONFIG>_<SOFTDEVICE>.elf scheme. Example: my_app_nrf52832_xxaa_s132_nrf52_6.1.0.elf

Configuration

You can select chip version, Softdevice version and other configuration variables by passing them to CMake:

cmake -Dvar=value .

Available configuration variables:

Variable	Values	Default	Example
DEVICE	`nrf51`, `nrf52832`, `nrf52840`, `nrf52810`	`nrf52832`	`-DDEVICE=nrf52832`
CHIP_CONFIG	Depends on the chosen device, e.g. `xxaa`, `xxab`	`xxaa`	`-DCHIP_CONFIG=xxab`
SOFTDEVICE	Depends on the chosen device, e.g. `nosd`, `s132_nrf52_6.1.0`	`nosd`	`-DSOFTDEVICE=s132_nrf52_6.1.0`
RAM_OFFSET	Offset of application RAM start from the base Softdevice RAM offset.	`0`	`-DRAM_OFFSET=1024`

Example

To illustrate, here's how to build the example project in the example directory on Windows with Ninja, assuming that you have added SDK_ROOT to your environment variables:

cd example
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Ninja ..
ninja

Flashing

After building your applications, you can flash them with nrfjprog from the nRF5 Command line tools.

To flash an application without a Softdevice, call

nrfjprog --program <application>.hex --chiperase --reset

If you specified a Softdevice in the build configuration step, you'll need to first flash the Softdevice hexfile, then the application:

nrfjprog --program <softdevice>.hex --chiperase
nrfjprog --program <application>.hex --reset