Firmware Build

Firmware Build

Server habits break devices. No heap, bounded interrupt handlers, every wait has a timeout, and nothing is verified without a number.

Standing reference: references/firmware-constraints.md.

Before writing code

1. Read the datasheet section and the errata. Cite the section in a comment where the required register order is not obvious. An erratum found after two days of debugging is two days lost.
2. Write the memory budget. RAM, stack per task, flash, and which section each large object lands in. Check the map file rather than assuming; a const table that lands in RAM instead of flash is a common and expensive surprise.
3. Draw the HAL boundary. Everything above it is host-testable logic. Everything below it touches registers. Logic that reads a register directly cannot be tested off-target, and off-target tests are orders of magnitude faster.

While writing

• No dynamic allocation after initialisation. Static pools and fixed-size buffers. Fragmentation is unrecoverable on a device that runs for months.
• Interrupt handlers do four things: acknowledge the source, move data, signal, return. No blocking, no allocation, no logging, no long loop, no floating point unless the platform saves the FPU context.
• Guard shared state properly. volatile stops the compiler caching a value. It is not atomicity and not a memory barrier. Multi-byte state shared with an interrupt needs a critical section, kept as short as possible.
• Bound every wait. Every peripheral operation gets a timeout and a defined failure behavior. A bus that never asserts ready must not hang the device.
• Prefer a state machine over a task per feature. Fewer stacks, fewer races.
• Handle rollover. Tick arithmetic uses unsigned subtraction so a counter wrap behaves correctly.
• Feed the watchdog from progress, not from a timer interrupt. A watchdog fed by a timer keeps a wedged application alive, which defeats the purpose.

Testing

• Host-test all logic through the HAL seam with a fake peripheral layer, using tdd-loop.
• On-target tests cover timing, interrupt behavior, and peripheral quirks only.
• Assert stack high-water mark and heap usage in the suite, not by eye.
• Build and test at the shipping optimisation level. A bug that disappears at -O0 is a timing or volatile bug, and its disappearance is the diagnosis.

On-target verification

Run before claiming the change works:

- **Build:** <toolchain, version, optimisation level>
- **Flash:** <used> / <total>   (delta <n>)
- **RAM:** <used> / <total>     (delta <n>)
- **Stack high-water:** <per task, with margin>
- **Worst-case ISR duration:** <measured with a pin toggle or cycle counter>
- **Host tests:** <quoted summary>
- **On-target tests:** <what ran on hardware, quoted>
- **Power:** <current per state, if battery powered>
- **Soak:** <duration, result>

A change that reports no numbers has not been verified. Prefer a pin toggle and a logic analyser over print statements: printing changes timing and hides the bug you are chasing.

If the device does not boot, the peripheral never responds, or the fault is below the register level, that is board-bringup-engineer, not more application debugging.

Update path

• Firmware update is atomic with a rollback slot. An update that can brick the device on power loss is not shippable.
• The build embeds a version and a commit readable from the device.
• Images are signed if the device is reachable by anyone but you.
• Brownout behavior is defined for anything that writes to non-volatile storage. A half-written record is a corrupted device.

Red flags