Introduction

The purpose of the extension is to help users develop, deploy and debug applications on TorizonCore, using Visual Studio Code as the IDE. The following programming languages are currently supported:

• Python
• .NET Core

This article will help you set up the recommended configuration.

Prerequisites

• Development Computer with:
  • Prerequisites from Configure Build Environment for Torizon Containers installed
  • Visual Studio Code
  • One of the OS below:
    • Windows 10 Pro / Enterprise / Education
    • Linux (it was validated using Ubuntu 18.04)
• Toradex Hardware with TorizonCore installed.

Make sure that the board and development computers are on the same network.

Required Software

Here you will install:

• Visual Studio Extension for Torizon
• .NET Code SDK (Required for .NET Core Applications Only)
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (Windows Development OS Only)
• ARM emulation mode (Linux Development OS Only)

Install the Visual Studio Code Extension for Torizon

The latest version of the extension can be found on the Visual Studio Code marketplace. Click on the extensions button in Visual Studio Code as shown in the image below and search for Torizon:

If everything is alright you should see that the extension has been enabled via the sidebar menu.

Install the .Net Core SDK on Windows

Required for .NET Core applications only

Download the latest .NET Core SDK on Microsoft Official Website and follow the setup installation. In order to check if everything went well, open up a command prompt and run the following command

$ dotnet

If the installation was successful, you should see the .NET options on the command prompt

Install the .Net Core SDK on Linux

Required for .NET Core applications only

Follow the .NET Microsoft Documentation in order to install it on Linux, and make sure you select the correct distribution on the left.

You cant test if everything went well by running the following command

$ dotnet --info

[COLLAPSE=Expected result]

.NET Core SDK (reflecting any global.json):
 Version:   3.1.102
 Commit:    573d158fea

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     ubuntu
 OS Version:  18.04
 OS Platform: Linux
 RID:         ubuntu.18.04-x64
 Base Path:   /usr/share/dotnet/sdk/3.1.102/

Host (useful for support):
  Version: 3.1.2
  Commit:  916b5cba26

.NET Core SDKs installed:
  3.1.102 [/usr/share/dotnet/sdk]

.NET Core runtimes installed:
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 3.1.2 [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 3.1.2 [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]

To install additional .NET Core runtimes or SDKs:
  https://aka.ms/dotnet-download

Install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (required only on Windows 10)

In order to obtain the Linux subsystem, please refer to the Microsoft instructions. After all the steps were followed, reboot your machine, open a PowerShell and run following command

$ wsl

You should see the below command output.

Enable ARM Emulation Mode (required only on Linux)

The VS Code extension needs ARM emulation mode enabled through binfmt. To enable it press F1 and then type "Torizon: Enable ARM emulation for Docker containers":

Click on continue in the following window:

If everything goes well, you should see the ARM emulation enabled message in your Visual Studio Code.

Add Target Device Connection In Visual Studio Code

To debug and test our application we need a device to deploy it. Open Visual Studio Code and press F1 to open the command bar, then you can run one of two commands below to add a device connected over the network or over serial.

The command torizon.detectSerialDevice will add a serial connection to a Torizon device, you will be prompted to specify which port on your development PC the device is connected to over serial.

The command torizon.detectNetworkDevice will add a network connection to your Torizon device, you will be prompted to specify the IP address of your Torizon device. Just make sure that your device is on the same network as your development PC and can actually be reached.

Either way, you will then be prompted to enter a valid username and password that is on your Torizon device, this will make it briefly reboot. You should see some dialog in the Terminal output of the VS code that shows whether the connection was a success or not. Also if you’ve already created a Torizon Project then the device will be listed via the Torizon extension sidebar menu.

Expected Result:

Visual Studio Code Extension Commands

On Visual Studio Code, executing command is easy: you just need to press F1 to open the command bar then type the command you want. Here is a list with every command and its respective action and category