Automate building of HEX files for your nRF Connect SDK application

Continuous delivery shortens the time to market of a product. The nRF9160 DK supports firmware over-the-air (FOTA) upgrades for AWS and for Azure. As a developer, you most probably want to update the latest firmware, using FOTA, in your development kit every time the application changes.

Continuous delivery requires automation of the process that builds the HEX file of an application.

../../_images/github-release-with-hex-files.png — GitHub release with attached HEX files

Getting all the installation and configuration steps right takes a while, but afterwards you have a reproducible recipe to build your HEX files, as part of your source code project.

Not only does that mean you can provide up-to-date HEX files with zero effort, but using a CI runner allows you to automate your software releases using a project called semantic release.

Note

By default, the semantic-release gets the reposityUrl from the package.json file. It uses the URL to determine the changes between releases. After forking the firmware repository, the URL will still point to https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/asset-tracker-cloud-firmware.git. Either update that to the URL of your fork, or provide it as an argument to the semantic-release CLI.

The workflow definition for GitHub Actions automatically builds HEX files and attaches them to the GitHub release.

Following this example, format your commit messages following a certain schema (for more information see Releasing a new version of a package) to trigger a new release.