Newt

Apache Newt is a smart build and package management tool, designed for C and C++ applications in embedded contexts. Newt was developed as a part of the Apache Mynewt Operating System, more information on Apache Mynewt can be found at https://mynewt.apache.org/.

Features

Newt is a build system that can read a directory tree, build a dependency tree, and emit the right build artifacts. It then allows you to do the following:

• Download built target to board
• Generate full flash images
• Download debug images to a target board using a debugger
• Conditionally compile libraries & code based upon build settings
• Generate and download manufacturing flash images

Newt is also a source management system that allows you to do the following:

• Create reusable source distributions (called repos) from a collection of code.
• Use third-party components with licenses that are not comptatible with the ASF (Apache Software Foundation) license
• Upgrade repos

How it Works

When Newt sees a directory tree that contains a “project.yml” file, it recognizes it as the base directory of a project, and automatically builds a package tree. More information can be found in the “Newt Tool Manual” under Docs at https://mynewt.apache.org/.

Getting Started

To build Apache Newt, simply run the included build.sh script. For more information on building and installng Apache Newt, please read INSTALLING or the documentation on https://mynewt.apache.org/

Once you’ve installed newt, you can get started by creating a new project:

  $ newt new your_project

For more information, and a tutorial for getting started, please take a look at the Apache Mynewt documentation.

Contributing

Introduction

Anybody who works with Apache Mynewt can be a contributing member of the community that develops and deploys it. The process of releasing an operating system for microcontrollers is never done: and we welcome your contributions to that effort.

Pull Requests

Apache Mynewt welcomes pull request via Github. Discussions are done on Github, but depending on the topic, can also be relayed to the official Apache Mynewt developer mailing list dev@mynewt.apache.org.

Filing Bugs

Bugs can be filed as Github issues here. Where possible, please include a self-contained reproduction case!

Feature Requests

If you are suggesting a new feature, please email the developer list directly with a description of the feature or submit a Github issue.

Writing Tests

We love getting newt tests! Apache Mynewt is a huge undertaking, and improving code coverage is a win for every Apache Mynewt user.

Newt tests are regular Go tests and run in GitHub Actions on every pull request. They can also be run locally from the repository root:

$ go test ./...

Useful variants:

$ go test -v ./...                      # show each test and newt's output
$ go test ./newt/toolchain              # run tests of a single package
$ go test -v -run TestUpgrade ./newt    # run only matching tests
$ go test -count=1 ./...                # ignore cached test results

Only Go and git are needed; the tests do not need network access or a newt binary. The test binary runs itself as newt, and each test works on a copy of a project from newt/testdata in a temporary directory. Remote repositories used by the upgrade tests are local dummy repositories stored as git fast-export streams in newt/testdata/upgrade/dummy-repos; these tests ignore your global and system git configuration.

New end-to-end tests can follow the same pattern: add a project under newt/testdata and a *_test.go file in newt/ that runs newt commands against it.

Writing Documentation

Contributing to documentation (in addition to writing tests), is a great way to get involved with the Apache Mynewt project. The Newt documentation is found in /docs.

Getting Help

The best place to seek help is the Apache Mynewt slack channel

The Apache Mynewt developers mailing list is another good resource.