One of my new years goals is to contribute something to Zynthian development
Currently I have 2 options on my mind:
Remote debugging via VS Code on “bare metal” installation on RPi4
It should work on any OS, so it is the first way that I’ve thought of.
Dockerized Zynthian image (I doubt that it already exist)
This is very tricky, as it would require to run some audio server that may enable audio routing from Docker image to OS of the host. And I even don’t know if e.g. Pulse Audio client may be wired up to existing Zynthian configuration.
Years ago, i used to develop for zynthian on my linux desktop using the “emulator”, but as the project got more complex, it becames more difficult to keep working a reliable development environment on desktop and i ended developing directly on RBPi.
The true is that there are too many dependencies with the “real machine” and you always need to test changes on a real zynthian, so i realized it’s better to improve my development workflow having a “real zynthian” aside my desktop computer.
My setup is really simple:
A working zynthian machine connected to my local network
My linux desktop computer connected to my local network
I work with a local copy of the repositories on my desktop and make the changes with my favorite text editor (Kate), copy the files to the zynthian machine (grsync is really useful here) and test the changes on the zynthian machine (the terminal is my best friend here).
When new code is tested, i commit the changes and test the “update process” to close the loop.
This is my workflow, but other developers probably have their own way.
Anyway, if you really want to work on a “desktop development environment”, you are very welcome. Feel free to work on it and please, share your advances.
I also use a real Zynthian, or at least a Raspberry Pi for most development. Contrary to @jofemodo I tend to work on the files on the actual RPi via ssh, e.g. using vi or via VNC running Code::Blocks IDE. I test then commit and push to GitHub directly on the RPi. I use a Windows 10 laptop with built-in SSH command line client and Edge browser to access Zynthian’s noVNC. I sometimes use a Bodhi Linux netbook instead of the Windows 10 laptop. I tried using VSCode with its SSH plugin but that kills the RPi due to horrible memory usage (and leakage) in its C++ plugin.
You wont be able to run Zynthian on Virtualbox as Virtualbox is a hypervisor, not a cpu emulator. You could run Ubuntu or Fedora on Virtualbox and use those to emulate arm code though.
This is the Zynthian webconfig from the 2021-09-25 image running in a systemd-nspawn container. Set up with the instructions above on Fedora. systemd isn’t a thing so you have to hand start a bunch of stuff after setting some environment variables.
Thanks, very nice tutorial. Finally I’ve got some time to invest in zynthian contribution.
I did steps for webconf and succesfully catched desired breakpoint, but when I did similar steps for zynthian-ui it failed.
I assume that some preconditions have to be satisfied to run/debug but which are essential and in what order?
I’ve found zynthian.sh launcher script, but I’m not sure which steps are mandatory to debug GUI?
Just running load_config_env() should be enough?
Or when I run systemctl stop zynthian it turned off some more required services?
To debug zynthian-ui you need X running. I do it thus:
systemctl stop zynthian
X :0 -r -s0
Within VSCode:
Install Python plugin
Connect to remote host (zynthian) via ssh
Start debugging
I use this VSCode launc.json:
{
// Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
// Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
// For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Zynthian",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"program": "zynthian_main.py",
"console": "integratedTerminal",
"justMyCode": true,
"subProcess": true,
"env": {
"DISPLAY": ":0"
}
},
{
"name": "Zynthian Debug",
"type": "python",
"request": "launch",
"program": "zynthian_main.py",
"console": "integratedTerminal",
"justMyCode": true,
"env": {
"DISPLAY": ":0",
"ZYNTHIAN_LOG_LEVEL": "10"
}
}
]
}
I mostly use VNC to access the GUI to allow this to be all done from the comfort of my sofa…
Within webconf INTERFACE->UI Options: Enable VNC Server
Reboot (The service does not necessarily start fully straight away so this tends to be a good step)
Access GUI via http://zynthian.local:6080/vnc.html?autoconnect=true&password=raspberry
If you have changed the hostname or your LAN exposes it differently (e.g. DNS gives it a local domain name) then adjust zynthian.local.
If you have changed the password, adjust raspberry.
Of course you can just access it without this but have to enter the password each time which I find boring.
[Edit] Note about the X options:
:0 tells it to use display 0 which is configured by default as the main display. (:1 is the VNC desktop view - you could put it there if it is beneficial, e.g. you want to see the Zynthian GUI and plugin GUIs within the same view.)
-r tells it to disable key repeat which can cause issues with computer keyboard control (that I use a lot in VNC).
-s0 tells it to disable screensaver to avoid the display (including VNC) blanking after a period of inactivity.
This is an indication that it is not able to run the GUI - almost certainly because it does not find the X server. Have you set the env vars in VSCode’s launch.json?
