Improve build documentation

[lgleim]

The current build instructions are insufficient.

It is fully unclear to new users and potential contributors what the actual build process looks like and which configuration parameters are to be adapted for any given device software combination.

To understand the build roster, the user currently needs to untangle the GitHub action scripts, which are not easily executable locally.
That build further currently depends on nodejs preprocessing scripts, for which both source and transpiled code exists in the repo. There are also python scripts, then there are multiple configuration and metadata files. Finally, which branch is even current and the base of the releases?

[ekobres]

I agree, though I have had some partial success using the VSCode Github Local Actions extension, which uses act to coordinate all of the node stuff and feed everything to docker. I was able to get as far as having the same build failure that happens on a freshly forked version of the repo. (There's 3 minutes of GitHub billable time I'll never get back.)

It would be really nice to have local scripts for each action. It's a little tricky when everything is so dependent on the build runner container. The actual SiLabs build stuff is pretty arcane and brittle inside that container for anyone who is not a full-time SiLabs embeded dev. It would also be nice to have everything (target baud-rate, pins, flow-control) defined in the manifest and then generate the patches from that rather than having to maintain 3 sets of patches for each device.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently, so we clean up some of the older and inactive issues.
Please make sure to update to the latest version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by leaving a comment 👍
This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[darkxst]

Sorry for the slow reply here.

The builds on legacy branch are very much tangled up in github actions, but the new builds are much simpler. SiSDK has now been made default branch, and SiSDK-Next has cutting-edge releases. These branches are what builds the Release assets as provided on repo.

I have provided for a while now a devcontainer and vscode task that you can use to build locally any single manifest file.

I would gladly accept any PR's that improve the Documentation.