This page is meant to introduce you to some of the concepts inherent to the Apache Mynewt Operating System, and Newt the tool that stitches a project built on Apache Mynewt together.
The project is the base directory of your embedded software tree. It is a workspace that contains a logical collection of source code, for one or more of your applications. A project consists of the following items:
project.yml
)Packages are described in detail in the section below.
Here is an example project definition file from the default Apache Mynewt project:
$ more project.yml <snip> project.name: "my_project" project.repositories: - apache-mynewt-core # Use github's distribution mechanism for core ASF libraries. # This provides mirroring automatically for us. # repository.apache-mynewt-core: type: github vers: 1-latest user: apache repo: mynewt-core $
A couple of things to note in the project definition:
project.repositories
: Defines the remote repositories that this project relies upon.
repository.apache-mynewt-core
: Defines the repository information for the apache-mynewt-core
repository.
vers=1-latest
: Defines the repository version. This string will use the latest stable version in the ‘Master’ github branch. To use the latest version in the master branch, just change it to vers=0-dev
. Note that this branch might not be stable.
Repositories are versioned collections of packages.
Projects can rely on remote repositories for functionality, and the newt tool will resolve those remote repositories, and download the correct version into your local source tree. Newly fetched repositories are put in the repos
directory of your project, and can be referenced throughout the system by using the @
specifier.
By default, the @apache-mynewt-core
repository is included in every project. Apache Mynewt Core contains all the base functionality of the Apache Mynewt Operating System, including the Real Time Kernel, Bluetooth Networking Stack, Flash File System, Console, Shell and Bootloader.
NOTE: Any project can be converted into a repository by providing it with a repository.yml
file and putting it up onto Github. More information about repositories can be found in the Newt documentation.
A package is a collection items that form a fundamental unit in the Mynewt Operating System. Packages can be:
A package is identified by having a pkg.yml
file in it's base directory. Here is a sample pkg.yml
file for the blinky applicaton:
$ more pkg.yml <snip> pkg.name: apps/blinky pkg.type: app pkg.description: Basic example application which blinks an LED. pkg.author: "Apache Mynewt <dev@mynewt.apache.org>" pkg.homepage: "http://mynewt.apache.org/" pkg.keywords: pkg.deps: - "@apache-mynewt-core/libs/os" - "@apache-mynewt-core/hw/hal" - "@apache-mynewt-core/libs/console/full"
Packages have a few features worth noting:
Everything that newt knows about within a project's directory is a package. This makes it very clean and easy to write re-usable components, which can describe their Dependencies and APIs to the rest of the system.
A target in Apache Mynewt is very similar to a target in make. It is the collection of parameters that must be passed to Newt in order to generate a reproducible build. A target represents the top of the build tree, and any packages or parameters specified at the target level, cascade down to all dependencies.
Targets are also packages, and are stored in the targets/
directory at the base of your project. Most targets consist of:
app
: The application to build.bsp
: The board support package to combine with that applicationbuild_profile
: Either debug
or optimized
.Targets can also have additional items specified, including:
aflags
: Any additional assembler flags you might want to specify to the build.cflags
: Any additional compiler flags you might want to specify to the build.lflags
: Any additional linker flags you might want to specify to the build.In order to create and manipulate targets, the newt tool offers a set of helper commands, you can find more information about these by issuing:
$ newt target ```no-highlight newt target Usage: newt target [flags] newt target [command] Available Commands: config View or populate a target's system configuration copy Copy target create Create a target delete Delete target dep View target's dependency graph revdep View target's reverse-dependency graph set Set target configuration variable show View target configuration variables Global Flags: -h, --help Help for newt commands -j, --jobs int Number of concurrent build jobs (default 8) -l, --loglevel string Log level (default "WARN") -o, --outfile string Filename to tee output to -q, --quiet Be quiet; only display error output -s, --silent Be silent; don't output anything -v, --verbose Enable verbose output when executing commands Use "newt target [command] --help" for more information about a command. $
Additional help topics:
$ newt target config show <target-name> ... * PACKAGE: sys/stats * Setting: STATS_CLI * Description: Expose the "stat" shell command. * Value: 0 * Setting: STATS_NAMES * Description: Include and report the textual name of each statistic. * Value: 0 * Setting: STATS_NEWTMGR * Description: Expose the "stat" newtmgr command. * Value: 0 ... $