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West Release Notes¶

v0.6.2¶

This point release fixes an error in the behavior of west update --fetch=smart, introduced in v0.6.1.

All v0.6.1 users must upgrade.

v0.6.1¶

Warning

Do not use this point release. Make sure to use v0.6.2 instead.

The user-visible features in this point release are:

The west update command has a new --fetch command line flag and update.fetch configuration option. The default value, “smart”, skips fetching SHAs and tags which are available locally.
Better and more consistent error-handling in the west diff, west status, west forall, and west update commands. Each of these commands can operate on multiple projects; if a subprocess related to one project fails, these commands now continue to operate on the rest of the projects. All of them also now report a nonzero error code from the west process if any of these subprocesses fails (this was previously not true of west forall in particular).
The west manifest command also handles errors better.
The west list command now works even when the projects are not cloned, as long as its format string only requires information which can be read from the manifest file. It still fails if the format string requires data stored in the project repository, e.g. if it includes the {sha} format string key.
Commands and options which operate on git revisions now accept abbreviated SHAs. For example, west init --mr SHA_PREFIX now works. Previously, the --mr argument needed to be the entire 40 character SHA if it wasn’t a branch or a tag.

The developer-visible changes to the West APIs are:

west.log.banner(): new
west.log.small_banner(): new
west.manifest.Manifest.get_projects(): new
west.manifest.Project.is_cloned(): new
west.commands.WestCommand instances can now access the parsed Manifest object via a new self.manifest property during the do_run() call. If read, it returns the Manifest object or aborts the command if it could not be parsed.
west.manifest.Project.git() now has a capture_stderr kwarg

v0.6.0¶

No separate bootstrapper

In west v0.5.x, the program was split into two components, a bootstrapper and a per-installation clone. See Multiple Repository Management in the v1.14 documentation for more details.

This is similar to how Google’s Repo tool works, and lets west iterate quickly at first. It caused confusion, however, and west is now stable enough to be distributed entirely as one piece via PyPI.

From v0.6.x onwards, all of the core west commands and helper classes are part of the west package distributed via PyPI. This eliminates complexity and makes it possible to import west modules from anywhere in the system, not just extension commands.
The selfupdate command still exists for backwards compatibility, but now simply exits after printing an error message.

Manifest syntax changes

A west manifest file’s projects elements can now specify their fetch URLs directly, like so:
```
manifest:
  projects:
    - name: example-project-name
      url: https://github.com/example/example-project
```
Project elements with url attributes set in this way may not also have remote attributes.

Project names must be unique: this restriction is needed to support future work, but was not possible in west v0.5.x because distinct projects may have URLs with the same final pathname component, like so:

manifest:
  remotes:
    - name: remote-1
      url-base: https://github.com/remote-1
    - name: remote-2
      url-base: https://github.com/remote-2
  projects:
    - name: project
      remote: remote-1
      path: remote-1-project
    - name: project
      remote: remote-2
      path: remote-2-project

These manifests can now be written with projects that use url instead of remote, like so:

manifest:
  projects:
    - name: remote-1-project
      url: https://github.com/remote-1/project
    - name: remote-2-project
      url: https://github.com/remote-2/project

The west list command now supports a {sha} format string key
The default format string for west list was changed to "{name:12} {path:28} {revision:40} {url}".
The command west manifest --validate can now be run to load and validate the current manifest file, among other error-handling fixes related to manifest parsing.
Incompatible API changes were made to west’s APIs. Further changes are expected until API stability is declared in west v1.0.
- The west.manifest.Project constructor’s remote and defaults positional arguments are now kwargs. A new url kwarg was also added; if given, the Project URL is set to that value, and the remote kwarg is ignored.
- west.manifest.MANIFEST_SECTIONS was removed. There is only one section now, namely manifest. The sections kwargs in the west.manifest.Manifest factory methods and constructor were also removed.
- The west.manifest.SpecialProject class was removed. Use west.manifest.ManifestProject instead.

v0.5.x¶

West v0.5.x is the first version used widely by the Zephyr Project as part of its v1.14 Long-Term Support (LTS) release. The west v0.5.x documentation is available as part of the Zephyr’s v1.14 documentation.

West’s main features in v0.5.x are:

Multiple repository management using Git repositories, including self-update of west itself
Hierarchical configuration files
Extension commands

Versions Before v0.5.x¶

Tags in the west repository before v0.5.x are prototypes which are of historical interest only.