In a recent article “Tools for Zephyr”, west is described as a tool used to handle different tasks like setting up the code base, building the system and also download and run the system. In this article we will look into the topic of setting up the code base.

A challenge for an embedded developer is to manage different toolchains on the development machine. You might work with different hardware architectures in different projects or handling compilers in the same project, where different project releases use different compilers. One way to handle this is to use containerized development in Docker.

Whenever your start a new embedded project it most often boils down to getting access to the tools needed to build your software for the selected hardware. Building Zephyr projects is not different in that way but the good thing with Zephyr is that it also provides a toolchain.

The Linux project is maybe the most successful open-source project so far for desktop and server applications. In recent years Linux has also gained traction as operating systems in embedded systems, especially IOT devices.

Linux is a successful open-source project also in embedded devices for medical, telecom, industry, and automotive solutions. For systems requiring hard real-time and/or safety-critical systems, Linux Foundation has launched Zephyr designed to support resource-constrained devices.

Developing RTOS features from scratch is difficult and time-consuming. There is no doubt that you will bring a product to market faster by using a mature existing RTOS and it is likely that your maintenance burden will be reduced.