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West is Zephyr’s multi-repository management tool and the foundation of professional Zephyr development workflows. This chapter transforms you from a basic Zephyr user into a West power user, enabling you to manage complex projects, customize build environments, and maintain reproducible development setups.
Building on your understanding of the Zephyr build system and configuration from previous chapters, you’ll now master the tool that orchestrates everything—from managing multiple repositories to automating builds across different target platforms.
Modern embedded development rarely involves single, isolated repositories. Professional Zephyr projects typically integrate:
West solves these challenges by providing a unified workspace management system that maintains precise control over every component in your development environment.
Scenario 1: Multi-Board IoT Product Your company develops IoT sensors for industrial applications. The same core application must run on three different hardware platforms (prototype, production, and field test units), each requiring different driver sets and configurations. West manages these variants through manifest files, ensuring each team member and deployment environment uses exactly the right combination of code and dependencies.
Scenario 2: Team Development with External Dependencies Your team of eight developers works on a complex Zephyr application that integrates custom sensor drivers, third-party networking stacks, and multiple board support packages. Without West, maintaining consistent development environments across the team becomes a nightmare. With West, every developer gets identical workspace setup with a single command.
Scenario 3: Continuous Integration Pipeline Your automated build system must compile and test your Zephyr application against multiple hardware targets and configuration variants. West’s manifest system enables your CI/CD pipeline to reproduce exact build environments, ensuring that what builds in CI will build identically on developer machines.
West operates as the orchestration layer above individual tools:
Repository Management: West fetches, updates, and synchronizes multiple Git repositories according to precise specifications, ensuring every team member works with identical code versions.
Build Environment Setup: Rather than manually managing CMake arguments, toolchain paths, and configuration files, West provides standardized commands that work consistently across projects and platforms.
Dependency Resolution: West automatically manages complex dependency relationships between your application code, Zephyr itself, and external modules, preventing version conflicts and missing dependencies.
Workspace Isolation: Each West workspace is self-contained, allowing you to work on multiple Zephyr projects simultaneously without interference between environments.
By completing this chapter, you will:
Master West Workspace Management: Create, configure, and maintain West workspaces for different project types and team collaboration scenarios
Understand Manifest Files: Read, modify, and create West manifest files to specify exact repository versions, dependencies, and build configurations
Apply Advanced West Commands: Use West’s full command set for repository operations, build management, and workspace maintenance
Implement Custom Development Workflows: Design manifest-driven workflows that automate repetitive tasks while maintaining reproducible environments
Troubleshoot West Issues: Diagnose and resolve common West problems, from repository synchronization issues to build environment conflicts
Throughout this chapter, you’ll work with practical examples using your Raspberry Pi 4B as the target platform:
This chapter builds directly on your knowledge from:
West skills prepare you for upcoming chapters:
West transforms Zephyr development from a manual, error-prone process into a streamlined, professional workflow. Let’s master this essential foundation for serious embedded development.