Create your first AGL application

Prerequisites

• xds-agent is running on your machine (see Installing XDS client tools previous chapter)
• xds-server is running locally in a docker container or is accessible on your network (see Installing XDS server previous chapter)
• one or more SDK have been installed (see Installing AGL SDKs previous chapter)
• XDS configuration is correct: in other words, all table lines are blue in configuration page of XDS Dashboard.

Setup

Let’s use for example helloworld-native-application, so you need first to clone this project into a directory that will be accessible by xds-server. Depending of the project sharing method:

• Cloud sync: you can clone project anywhere on your local disk,
• Path mapping: you must clone project into $HOME/xds-workspace directory.

Note: : helloworld-native-application project is an AGL project based on app-templates (included as a git submodule). This CMake templating, used to develop application with the AGL Application Framework, will automatically generate makefile rules (eg. remote-target-populate) or scripts (eg. build/target/xxx scripts).

For more info about app-template, please refer to this documentation.

Clone project

cd $HOME/xds-workspace
git clone --recursive https://github.com/iotbzh/helloworld-native-application.git

Declare project into XDS

Use XDS Dashboard to declare your project. Open a browser and connect to XDS Dashboard. URL depends of your config, for example http://localhost:8000

Click cog icon to open configuration panel and then create/declare a new project by with the plus icon of Projects bar.

Set Sharing Type and paths according to your setup.

Note that XDS creates a file name xds-project.conf (if not already exists) when you declare a new project using XDS Dashboard. This file may be very useful when you will use XDS client tools such as xds-exec (see next chapter).

Note: when you select Path mapping, you must clone your project into $HOME/xds-workspace directory (named “Local Path” in modal window) and “Server Path” must be set to /home/devel/xds-workspace/xxx where xxx is your project directory name. If you select Cloud Sync, you can clone your project where you want on your local disk.

Build from XDS dashboard

Open the build page (icon ), then select your Project and the Cross SDK you want to use and click on Clean / Pre-Build / Build / Populate buttons to execute various build actions.

Build from command line

You need to determine which is the unique id of your project. You can find this ID in project page of XDS dashboard or you can get it from command line using the --list option. This option lists all existing projects ID:

xds-exec --list

List of existing projects:
  CKI7R47-UWNDQC3_myProject
  CKI7R47-UWNDQC3_test2
  CKI7R47-UWNDQC3_test3

Note: XDS tools, including xds-exec are installed by default in /opt/AGL/bin directory and this path has been added into your PATH variable. If it is not the case, just add it manually using export PATH=${PATH}:/opt/AGL/bin command line.

Now to refer your project, just use –id option or use XDS_PROJECT_ID environment variable.

You are now ready to use XDS to for example cross build your project. Here is an example to build a project based on CMakefile:

# Go into your project directory and create a build directory
cd $MY_PROJECT_DIR
mkdir build

# Generate build system using cmake
xds-exec --id=CKI7R47-UWNDQC3_myProject --sdkid=poky-agl_aarch64_4.0.1 --url=http://localhost:8000 -- cd build && cmake ..

# Build the project
xds-exec --id=CKI7R47-UWNDQC3_myProject --sdkid=poky-agl_aarch64_4.0.1 --url=http://localhost:8000 -- cd build && make all

To avoid to set project id, xds server url, … at each command line, you can define these settings as environment variable within an env file and just set --config option or source file before executing xds-exec.

XDS creates a file name xds-project.conf (only if not already exists) when you declare a new project using XDS Dashboard. Use this file with --config option.

For example, the equivalence of above command is:

# MY_PROJECT_DIR=/home/seb/xds-workspace/helloworld-native-application
cd $MY_PROJECT_DIR

# Edit and potentially adapt xds-project.conf file that has been created
# automatically on project declaration using XDS Dashboard
vi xds-project.conf
  # XDS project settings
  export XDS_SERVER_URL=localhost:8000
  export XDS_PROJECT_ID=cde3b382-9d3b-11e7_helloworld-native-application
  export XDS_SDK_ID=poky-agl_aarch64_4.0.1

# Create build directory and invoke cmake and then build project
xds-exec --config xds-project.conf -- "mkdir -p build && cd build && cmake .."
cd build && xds-exec -- make all

# Or equivalent by first sourcing conf file (avoid to set --config option)
source xds-project.conf
xds-exec -- "mkdir -p build && cd build && cmake .."
cd build && xds-exec -- make all

Note: all parameters after a double dash (–) are considered as the command to execute on xds-server.

Build from IDE

First create an XDS config file or reuse the previous one, for example we use here aarch64 SDK to cross build application for a Renesas Gen3 board.

# create file at root directory of your project
# for example:
# MY_PROJECT_DIR=/home/seb/xds-workspace/helloworld-native-application
cat > $MY_PROJECT_DIR/xds-project.conf << EOF
 export XDS_SERVER_URL=localhost:8000
 export XDS_PROJECT_ID=cde3b382-9d3b-11e7_helloworld-native-application
 export XDS_SDK_ID=poky-agl_aarch64_3.99.3
EOF

NetBeans

This chapter will show you how to create 2 configurations, one to compile your project natively (using native GNU gcc) and one to cross-compile your project using XDS. You can easily switch from one to other configuration using menu Run -> Set Project Configuration.

Netbeans 8.x :

• Open menu Tools -> Options

  • Open C/C++ tab, in Build Tools sub-tab, click on Add button:

    

  • Then, you should set Make Command and Debugger Command to point to xds tools:

    

  • Finally click on OK button.

• Now create we first declare project into NetBeans and create first a native configuration. To do that, open menu File -> New Project

• Select C/C++ Project with Existing Sources ; Click on Next button

• Specify your project directory and set Select Configuration Mode to Custom. Keep Tool Collection to Default GNU in order to create a native configuration based on native GNU GCC. Finally click on Next button.

  

• Just update Run in Folder field and add build_native suffix so that resulting build files will be located into build_native sub-directory. Keep all others settings to default value and click on Next button.

  

• Click several times on Next button (always keep default settings) and click on Finish button to complete creation of native configuration.

• Now we will create a cross configuration based on XDS tools. Edit project properties (using menu File -> Project Properties) to add a new configuration that will use XDS to cross-compile your application for example for a Renesas Gen3 board.

  • in Build category, click on Manage Configurations button and then New button to add a new configuration named for example “Gen3 board”

    

  • Click on Set Active button

  • Select Pre-Build sub-category, and set:
    • Working Directory: build_gen3
    • Command Line: xds-exec -c ../xds-project.conf -- cmake -DRSYNC_TARGET=root@renesas-gen3 -DRSYNC_PREFIX=/opt ..
    • Pre-build First: ticked
  • Select Make sub-category, and set:
    • Working Directory: build_gen3
    • Build Command: xds-exec -c ../xds-project.conf -- make remote-target-populate
    • Clean Command: xds-exec -c ../xds-project.conf -- make clean

    

  • Select Run sub-category, and set:
    • Run Command: target/[email protected]
    • Run Directory: build-gen3

    

  • Click on OK button to save settings

By changing configuration from Default to Gen3 board, you can now simply compile your helloworld application natively (Default configuration) or cross-compile your application through XDS for the Renesas Gen3 board (Gen3 board configuration).

Visual Studio Code

Open your project in VS Code

cd $MY_PROJECT_DIR
code . &

Add new tasks : press Ctrl+Shift+P and select the Tasks: Configure Task command and you will see a list of task runner templates.

And define your own tasks, here is an example to build helloworld-native-application AGL helloworld application based on cmake template.

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "type": "shell",
    "presentation": {
        "reveal": "always"
    },
    "tasks": [
        {
            "taskName": "clean",
            "command": "/bin/rm -rf ${workspaceFolder}/build/* && mkdir -p build && echo Cleanup done.",
            "problemMatcher": []
        },
        {
            "taskName": "pre-build",
            "group": "build",
            "command": "/opt/AGL/bin/xds-exec --rpath build --config xds-project.conf -- cmake -DRSYNC_TARGET=root@renesas-gen3 -DRSYNC_PREFIX=/opt ../",
            "problemMatcher": [
                "$gcc"
            ]
        },
        {
            "taskName": "build",
            "group": "build",
            "command": "/opt/AGL/bin/xds-exec --rpath build --config xds-project.conf -- make widget",
            "problemMatcher": [
                "$gcc"
            ]
        },
        {
            "taskName": "populate",
            "command": "/opt/AGL/bin/xds-exec --rpath build --config xds-project.conf -- make widget-target-install",
            "problemMatcher": []
        }
    ]
}

Note: You can also add your own keybindings to trig above tasks, for example:

// Build
{
  "key": "alt+f9",
  "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
  "args": "clean"
},
{
  "key": "alt+f10",
  "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
  "args": "pre-build"
},
{
  "key": "alt+f11",
  "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
  "args": "build"
},
{
  "key": "alt+f12",
  "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
  "args": "populate"
},

More details about VSC keybindings here

More details about VSC tasks here

Qt Creator

Please refer to agl-hello-qml project. Thanks to Dennis for providing this useful example.

Others IDE

Coming soon…