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Extensions

West is “pluggable”: you can add your own commands to west without editing its source code. These are called west extension commands, or just “extensions” for short. Extensions show up in the west --help output in a special section for the project which defines them. This page provides general information on west extension commands, and has a tutorial for writing your own.

Some commands you can run when using west with Zephyr, like the ones used to build, flash, and debug and the ones described here , are extensions. That’s why help for them shows up like this in west --help:

commands from project at "zephyr":
  completion:           display shell completion scripts
  boards:               display information about supported boards
  build:                compile a Zephyr application
  sign:                 sign a Zephyr binary for bootloader chain-loading
  flash:                flash and run a binary on a board
  debug:                flash and interactively debug a Zephyr application
  debugserver:          connect to board and launch a debug server
  attach:               interactively debug a board

See zephyr/scripts/west-commands.yml and the zephyr/scripts/west_commands directory for the implementation details.

Disabling Extension Commands

To disable support for extension commands, set the commands.allow_extensions configuration option to false. To set this globally for whenever you run west, use:

west config --global commands.allow_extensions false

If you want to, you can then re-enable them in a particular west workspace with:

west config --local commands.allow_extensions true

Note that the files containing extension commands are not imported by west unless the commands are explicitly run. See below for details.

Adding a West Extension

There are three steps to adding your own extension:

  1. Write the code implementing the command.

  2. Add information about it to a west-commands.yml file.

  3. Make sure the west-commands.yml file is referenced in the west manifest.

Note that west ignores extension commands whose names are the same as a built-in command.

Step 1: Implement Your Command

Create a Python file to contain your command implementation (see the “Meta > Requires” information on the west PyPI page for details on the currently supported versions of Python). You can put it in anywhere in any project tracked by your west manifest, or the manifest repository itself. This file must contain a subclass of the west.commands.WestCommand class; this class will be instantiated and used when your extension is run.

Here is a basic skeleton you can use to get started. It contains a subclass of WestCommand, with implementations for all the abstract methods. For more details on the west APIs you can use, see West APIs.

'''my_west_extension.py

Basic example of a west extension.'''

from textwrap import dedent            # just for nicer code indentation

from west.commands import WestCommand  # your extension must subclass this
from west import log                   # use this for user output

class MyCommand(WestCommand):

    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(
            'my-command-name',  # gets stored as self.name
            'one-line help for what my-command-name does',  # self.help
            # self.description:
            dedent('''
            A multi-line description of my-command.

            You can split this up into multiple paragraphs and they'll get
            reflowed for you. You can also pass
            formatter_class=argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter when calling
            parser_adder.add_parser() below if you want to keep your line
            endings.'''))

    def do_add_parser(self, parser_adder):
        # This is a bit of boilerplate, which allows you full control over the
        # type of argparse handling you want. The "parser_adder" argument is
        # the return value of an argparse.ArgumentParser.add_subparsers() call.
        parser = parser_adder.add_parser(self.name,
                                         help=self.help,
                                         description=self.description)

        # Add some example options using the standard argparse module API.
        parser.add_argument('-o', '--optional', help='an optional argument')
        parser.add_argument('required', help='a required argument')

        return parser           # gets stored as self.parser

    def do_run(self, args, unknown_args):
        # This gets called when the user runs the command, e.g.:
        #
        #   $ west my-command-name -o FOO BAR
        #   --optional is FOO
        #   required is BAR
        log.inf('--optional is', args.optional)
        log.inf('required is', args.required)

You can ignore the second argument to do_run() (unknown_args above), as WestCommand will reject unknown arguments by default. If you want to be passed a list of unknown arguments instead, add accepts_unknown_args=True to the super().__init__() arguments.

Step 2: Add or Update Your west-commands.yml

You now need to add a west-commands.yml file to your project which describes your extension to west.

Here is an example for the above class definition, assuming it’s in my_west_extension.py at the project root directory:

west-commands:
  - file: my_west_extension.py
    commands:
      - name: my-command-name
        class: MyCommand
        help: one-line help for what my-command-name does

The top level of this YAML file is a map with a west-commands key. The key’s value is a sequence of “command descriptors”. Each command descriptor gives the location of a file implementing west extensions, along with the names of those extensions, and optionally the names of the classes which define them (if not given, the class value defaults to the same thing as name).

Some information in this file is redundant with definitions in the Python code. This is because west won’t import my_west_extension.py until the user runs west my-command-name, since:

  • It allows users to run west update with a manifest from an untrusted source, then use other west commands without your code being imported along the way. Since importing a Python module is shell-equivalent, this provides some peace of mind.

  • It’s a small optimization, since your code will only be imported if it is needed.

So, unless your command is explicitly run, west will just load the west-commands.yml file to get the basic information it needs to display information about your extension to the user in west --help output, etc.

If you have multiple extensions, or want to split your extensions across multiple files, your west-commands.yml will look something like this:

west-commands:
  - file: my_west_extension.py
    commands:
      - name: my-command-name
        class: MyCommand
        help: one-line help for what my-command-name does
  - file: another_file.py
    commands:
      - name: command2
        help: another cool west extension
      - name: a-third-command
        class: ThirdCommand
        help: a third command in the same file as command2

Above:

  • my_west_extension.py defines extension my-command-name with class MyCommand

  • another_file.py defines two extensions:

    1. command2 with class command2

    2. a-third-command with class ThirdCommand

See the file west-commands-schema.yml in the west repository for a schema describing the contents of a west-commands.yml.

Step 3: Update Your Manifest

Finally, you need to specify the location of the west-commands.yml you just edited in your west manifest. If your extension is in a project, add it like this:

manifest:
   # [... other contents ...]

   projects:
     - name: your-project
       west-commands: path/to/west-commands.yml
     # [... other projects ...]

Where path/to/west-commands.yml is relative to the root of the project. Note that the name west-commands.yml, while encouraged, is just a convention; you can name the file something else if you need to.

Alternatively, if your extension is in the manifest repository, just do the same thing in the manifest’s self section, like this:

manifest:
  # [... other contents ...]

  self:
    west-commands: path/to/west-commands.yml

That’s it; you can now run west my-command-name. Your command’s name, help, and the project which contains its code will now also show up in the west --help output. If you share the updated repositories with others, they’ll be able to use it, too.