The Espressif docker image has been released here, but for idf.py flash
and idf.py monitor
to work in the container the serial ports should be configured to be passed to WSL from host Windows machine.
In this tutorial will show you how to develop your projects based on Visual Studio Code
+ ESP-IDF extension
+ ESP-IDF Docker Image
to execute all ESP-IDF extension features.
you need to install the following tools before starting our projects:
- Ubuntu on Windows
- Visual Studio Code
- usbipd-win
- Docker Desktop For Windows
Other tools are defined in Dockefile and will be part of the executed container.
Docker Desktop is an application for MacOS and Windows machines for the building and sharing of containerized applications. For more details, the user can refer to here, but the role of docker here is to import the ESP-IDF Docker Image
and manage it, such as start,restart,close etc.
NOTE: the default installing path of docker is C disk, so please move to other disks with
mklink
commands if the space size of C disk is not enough.
If you don't have WSL installed run
wsl --install
Update the WSL kernel with
wsl --update
Check the WSL available distributions list with the Powershell
command prompt, as below
wsl -l -o
so to install WSL on Windows, please type in the following command:
wsl --install --distribution Ubuntu
To access the USB
,serial
,JTAG
devices which are from the local Windows, this tools must be installed, else it is impossible to download,monitor and debug on IDF docker image side. the way to install it, it is also same as Windows applications, so it will not be described in detail here.
we still need to do a bit configurations after installing the four tools above:
-
check the current WSL version is 2
wsl -l -v
-
please upgrade to version 2, if not
wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2
-
set the Ubuntu distribution as default:
wsl -s Ubuntu
at last, to check if the commands have taken effect with wsl --status
command.
As the Ubuntu distribution has been updated to version 2, adjustments on the Docker side are required, and Ubuntu should also be chosen as the default WSL integration.
Install usbipd in Powershell command prompt:
winget install usbipd
Now configure the USB serial device to be able to connect to the WSL with usbipd
:
-
open PowerShell command prompt with administrator rights and then type in the command
usbipd list
for a list of USB serial devices. -
To access the specified device from Windows on WSL locally, the device must be bound with usbipd. Open PowerShell command prompt with administrator rights and then type in the command
usbipd bind --busid <BUSID>
:Note: this command needs to be used only one time,unless the computer has restarted. 1-1 is the device's bus id
<BUSID>
I would like to bind. -
after binding, please attach the specified device to WSL with
usbipd attach --wsl --busid <BUSID>
command in the Powershell command prompt. -
At last, let us check if it works well on both side and type in
dmesg | tail
command on WSL side.as we can see above, 1-1 device has been attached to
ttyACM0
, that means WSL can access the 1-1 USB device now.
Install the Remote - Containers
、Remote Development
and ESP-IDF
extensions, as below:
After all previous steps have taken effect, the WSL or docker container should be ready to use. Here is an example to show you how to utilize these tools.
Using Blink
and Hello_world
projects as examples, If you have more example projects, you can put them in the same folder and mount them together in the IDF Docker image; otherwise, it will take your much more space size on your disk as you need to create one container for each example project, that is not a good solution.
as seen from snapshot above, Blink
and Hello_world
example projects have been put in the same folder and we only need to open this folder with vscode:
some readers may see that there is a .devcontainer
folder in the example_project folder, which is not included by default; this is generated by using the ESP-IDF extension of Visual Studio Code to create and configure the ESP-IDF docker image for container development.
If the user readers also need to generate their own .devcontainer
folder content, as follows:
- open example project with vscode and then press
F1
- In the pop-up dialog box, search for the
ESP-IDF: Add Docker Container Configuration
command .devcontainer
folder will be generated for the currently opened project.
For more information about devcontainer.json
, please refer to the comments.
// For format details, see https://aka.ms/devcontainer.json. For config options, see the README at:
// https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-dev-containers/tree/v0.183.0/containers/ubuntu
{
/* A name for the dev container displayed in the UI */
"name": "ESP-IDF",
/* container name when creating container */
"image": "espressif/idf:latest",
/* mount the local folder to /workspaces folder of docker image */
"workspaceMount": "source=${localWorkspaceFolder},target=/workspaces/project-name,type=bind",
/* the path of workspace folder, that means this folder will be opened after container is running
*/
"workspaceFolder": "/workspaces/project-name",
/* mount the vscode extensions to the target path, and then they don't need to install again when rebuilding the container
*/
"mounts": [
"source=extensionCache,target=/root/.vscode-server/extensions,type=volume"
],
/* follow the commands of Dockerfile to create the container
*/
"build": {
"dockerfile": "Dockerfile"
},
/* Machine specific settings that should be copied into the container
*/
"settings": {
"terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "bash",
"idf.espIdfPath": "/opt/esp/idf",
"idf.customExtraPaths": "",
"idf.pythonBinPath": "/opt/esp/python_env/idf5.3_py3.10_env/bin/python",
"idf.toolsPath": "/opt/esp",
"idf.gitPath": "/usr/bin/git"
},
/* An array of extensions that should be installed into the container. */
"extensions": ["espressif.esp-idf-extension"],
/* start the container with privileged mode, else the devices cannot be accessed on the docker image.
*/
"runArgs": ["--privileged"]
}
At this point, all related configurations have been completed.
Create a container and then start your development by clicking the ><
green button at the bottom left of Visual Studio Code and select Open Folder in Container
to start creating a container (It will be slightly slower, because to download the Docker image of ESP-IDF, you only need to download it once), and finally open the Blink
example project; if you need to switch to another project, just change it from "workspaceFolder": "/workspaces/blink"
to "workspaceFolder": "/workspaces/The name of the sample project you want to open"
, and then re-selectOpen Folder in Container
, as follows:
at this moment, you can start to use the Blink
example project for building, flashing, monitoring, debugging, etc.
Here taking the esp32-c3 as an example, users only need to change the target device from esp32
to esp32-c3
, as below:
next, start to build the example project, as below:
after building, we can use the following ways to download the firmware.
Based on the description above, users can follow the instructions usbipd section mentioned. here Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge
is taken as an example, it has been attached to docker image:
as you can see, this device has attached to ttyUSB0
, so idf.port
also need to change accordingly.
but, the container doesn't know the configuration has changed yet at this moment.
so users need to reopen the container, that is Reopen Folder Locally
and then the new configuration wil be reloaded as well.
at last, click the Flash
button and start to download the firmware.
Just as the external usb-serial, the only difference is the number attached. where the external usb-serial is ttyUSBx
, while the internal usb-serial is ttyACMx
.
Same as External USB-Serial and Internal USB-serial, but it needs to configure the following extra parameters:
the interface is the same as Internal USB-serial, that is ttyACMx
:
Make sure to run ESP-IDF: Add OpenOCD rules file (For Linux users)
command and ESP-IDF: Install ESP-IDF Python Packages
command to add openOCD rules and install debug adapter python packages in the docker container before running openOCD and starting a debug session with the ESP-IDF Debug Adapter.
After following USB-JTAG, press F5
to start to debug:
- When the container is created for the first time, it will prompt that the
ESP-IDF extension
cannot be activated because it depends on the MicrosoftC++ tools
extension. You only need to reopen the container again. This is because the ESP-IDF extension is dependent on the C++ Tools extension being installed first. - If you want to debug on Windows, you need to unplug the USB cable and re-plug in it again, otherwise the corresponding USB port cannot be found in the Windows device manager.
- Docker Desktop For Windows needs to be opened and cannot be closed during container development.