Flashing and debugging

Once you've developed an embedded Rust application for your i.MX RT target, you'll need additional tools to flash and debug your target. This page links to tools that can flash and debug i.MX RT targets. It also describes tips for integrating flashing and debugging tools in your Rust project.

In order to flash and debug an i.MX RT target, you'll need a physical debug probe that

is compatible with your chosen flashing and debugging software.
works with your hardware.

Consult each software tool's documentation to understand its support for your debug probe.

Recommendations for i.MX RT EVKs

When working with NXP's i.MX RT EVKs, we recommend either pyOCD or a probe-rs-based tool. Both of these tools can flash and debug the i.MX RT processor through the OpenSDA probe available on the board. This approach doesn't require an external JTAG / SWD debug probe.

Connect to the OpenSDA probe using a USB cable, and ensure that the board's jumpers are configured to use the OpenSDA probe. Consult your board's documentation for the specific USB port and jumper configurations.

If you've flashed a bad program to your EVK and you're having trouble reprogramming the board, see recovering an EVK.

pyOCD

pyOCD is a Python toolkit for debugging and programming Arm microcontrollers. It includes support for debugging i.MX RT 10xx and 11xx processors. It can also program external NOR flash chips, making it suitable for persistent device programming.

See our quick-start guide if you're interested in using pyOCD as a flashing and debugging tool.

You can also use pyOCD as a Cargo runner. For more information, see the Tips section.

probe-rs

probe-rs develops embedded debugging tools in Rust. All tools that build on probe-rs should support i.MX RT 10xx and 11xx processors. probe-rs can write your binary to external NOR flash chips, just like pyOCD. Consult probe-rs documentation for tool installation and usage.

ℹ️ Patches for i.MX RT targets may not yet be accepted or released. If that's the case, consider building tools from source.

Tips

These tips may be helpful for integrating flashing and debugging tools in your workflow. They may work for flashing and debugging tools that are not covered by this guide.

Use a Cargo runner

A runner describes the behavior of cargo run and other cargo commands. You can use a Cargo runner to invoke your flashing and debugging tool. See the Configuration chapter of The Cargo Book for more information.

Here's an example of a runner that uses pyocd to program a i.MX RT 1010 microcontroller. This assumes that you have pyocd installed. Once this configuration is specified in your project, cargo run --target=thumbv7em-none-eabihf will invoke pyocd to flash your target.

[target.thumbv7em-none-eabihf]
runner = [
    "pyocd", "load",
    "--target=mimxrt1010",
    "--format=elf",
]

imxrt-rs