In practical development, different developers prefer different development tools. For example, when developing for STM32, tools like Keil, IAR, and VSCode+GCC can be used. For example, the examples provided for the Anfu Lai development board often include projects for both Keil and IAR:
Is there a tool that can generate project files for multiple development environments simultaneously? I stumbled upon a tool called project_generator, which does just that.
What is project_generator?
project_generator is an embedded project generator, abbreviated as progen. We can write a specific syntax YAML file to manage our projects and generate IDE project files based on the rules defined in the records.
Visit the progen official website:
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https://pypi.org/project/project-generator/
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The progen project generator currently supports generating projects for the following tools (IDE, Makefile, etc.):
- uVision4 and uVision5
- IAR
- Generated files (GCC ARM)
- Generated files (ARMCC)
- Cmake (GCC ARM)
- CoIDE (GCC ARM)
- Eclipse (with Makefile for GCC ARM)
- Sublime (with Makefile for GCC ARM)
- Visual Studio (with Makefile for GCC ARM)
Installing project_generator
progen depends on a Python environment, so you need to set up Python first. You can install Python2.7.x or Python3.x.x, whichever you prefer. After setting up the Python environment, use pip to install project-generator:
pip install project-generator
After installation, you will get:
Practicing with project_generator
The official documentation provides us with a baremetal blinky example, which we will use for practical demonstration.
Download the baremetal blinky examples to get:
projects.yaml is the YAML file that manages our project. This is the main YAML file, which will reference sub-YAML files in records. The sub-YAML files referenced by projects.yaml can manage multiple projects simultaneously. For example, the content of projects.yaml is as follows:
projects:
gpio_demo_frdmk64f:
- records/frdm_k64f.yaml
gpio_demo_frdmkl25z:
- records/frdm_kl25z.yaml
gpio_demo_frdmkl46z:
- records/frdm_kl46z.yaml
This manages three projects: gpio_demo_frdmk64f, gpio_demo_frdmkl25z, and gpio_demo_frdmkl46z, with corresponding YAML files in records:
Next, we will use the progen tool to generate the project. Since the progen tool is stored in the Python/Scripts path and has been added to the environment variable, it is globally effective. We can execute the corresponding command in the baremetal blinky examples project directory to generate the project.
「1. Generate the Keil project for gpio_demo_frdmk64f:」
progen generate -f projects.yaml -p gpio_demo_frdmk64f -t uvision
The -p parameter specifies the project name; the -t parameter specifies the generated project type.
「2. Generate the IAR project for gpio_demo_frdmk64f:」
progen generate -f projects.yaml -p gpio_demo_frdmk64f -t iar_arm
「3. Generate the gcc_arm project for gpio_demo_frdmk64f:」
progen generate -f projects.yaml -p gpio_demo_frdmk64f -t gcc_arm
We know that tools like Keil initially support a limited number of chips, requiring the installation of chip support packages for expansion. Similarly, progen also has limited support for development boards and chips, but we can add target support ourselves. The path is as follows:
C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\project_generator_definitions\target
This concludes the brief sharing about the progen project generator. I learned about this tool by chance, explored it a bit, and wanted to share it with everyone, along with some basic practical insights.
This article does not cover the contents of the YAML file; if you are interested, you can learn more on your own:
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https://github.com/project-generator/project_generator/wiki/Home
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