trice

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Hi, I am Trice.

Trice User Manual

Log in (a) trice (S>G)

even inside ↯ interrupts in less than 1 µs❗

About

• Replace printf or log in C-code for getting:
  • Speed, to be usable also inside interrupts,
  • Space, to reduce needed FLASH memory size,
  • Features delighting the developers heart.
• Main idea: Logging strings not into an embedded device to display them later on a PC but keep usage comfortable and simple.

  - No version mismatch hassle❗
  + The Trice ID List accumulates the log strings -> the latest version can decode all former versions as well❗
  

• Trice consists of 2 parts:
  1. C code trice macros, similar usable like printf, generating tiny & super-fast embedded device real-time trace/log code.
  2. Tool trice for managing and visualization.
     • Written in Go and therefore usable on all platforms Go supports.
     • You can also use your own environment to receive the Trice packages, exchange the carried IDs with the format string and print out.
• Trice User Manual
• Trice Status: Trice is ready to be used!

Possible Use Cases

• Using Trice not only for printf debugging but also as logging technique is possible and gives the advantage to have very short messages (no strings) for transmission, but keep in mind that the file til.json is the key to read all output if your devices in the field for 10 or more years.
  • Optionally add til.json as a (compressed) resource to your target image. One possibility is using SRecord. Or simply provide a download link.
• You can see Trice also as a kind of data compression what could be interesting for IoT things, especially NB-IoT, where you have very low data rates.
• Storing Trice messages in FLASH memory for later log analysis saves memory because a typical TRICE occupies only 4 bytes independently of the format string length plus optional values.
• Also, it is possible to encrypt the Trice transfer packets to get a reasonable protection for many cases.
  • This way you can deliver firmware images with encrypted Trice output, only readable with the appropriate key and til.json.
  • XTEA is implemented as one option.
• You can even translate the til.json file in different languages, so changing a language is just changing the til.json file without touching the target binary.
• With Trice it is easy to do timing analysis on distributed embedded systems. Host and target timestamps are supported.

How it approximately works (UART example)

This slightly simplified view is explained here

Data Transfer

• Implemented:
  • UART connectable to virtual UART over USB
  • RTT over J-Link and RTT over ST-Link
  • TCP4
  • UDP4 (currently as PR #529)
• A small separate microcontroller is always usable as interfaces bridge from GPIO, I²C, SPI, CAN, LIN, ... to UART.
• With a Chip from FTDI, check for example Adafruit FT232H Breakout, GPIO, I2C and SPI are easy accessable.

Display server option

Start trice ds inside a console, option: third_party/alacritty, locally or on a remote PC and connect with several trice tool instances like with trice log -p COM15 -ds for example.

Documentation

• https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/trice (a bit outdated)
• Trice User Manual (covers also the interrupt blog actualized information)
• Check issues and discussions including the closed items.
• Read the target source code, especially triceDefaultConfig.h
• View the CLI options by executing trice help -all in a terminal or reading tricehelpall_test.go
• Look into and optionally modify ./internal/emitter/lineTransformerANSI.go (Needs go install ./cmd/trice/... afterwards.)

Debugging using VS-Code and Clang for a Trice-instrumented Project in Direct-Out Mode over SEGGER-RTT

(See chapter Development Environment Setup for more details.)

Trice Cache

Starting with Trice version 0.70.0 it is possible to use additionally the Trice -cache CLI switch for the commands trice insert and trice clean. This switch will have only effect when the user creates in his home directory the .trice/cache folder. (Trice Cache Spec)

When to use it

When you use trice i as a pre-compile step and trice c as a post-compile step to have the IDs not in the project source code when you work on it, therefore only during compilation time, and wish to speed-up the whole thing.

How it works

The Trice cache keeps copies of all to trice i or trice c passed files after processing them, to avoid repeatedly ID inserting and cleaning. The copies are used to get the same results as with trice i or trice c for all files not edited inbetween. Edited files are processed normally and the cache is updated afterwards. Because the file copies are done without changing the file modification time, a build system does not process unchanged files again even the IDs have been temporarily removed from the files.

Hint

Special care is needed, when the build system modifies source files as well!

For example an auto-formatter should get active before the tice insert command.

Wich mode to use?

• For the development direct mode with SEGGER_RTT is recommended.
• Most use cases are coverable in deferred mode with TRICE_BUFFER == TRICE_RING_BUFFER (less RAM needs) in TRICE_MULTI_PACK_MODE (less transfer data).

Project Status

Trice is full usable and there are no known bugs (see issues).

+ Please use v1.0 or v1.1 or branch main if you intend to build from the sources.
- Do not expect a well working Trice binary in branch "dev" right now. (2025-DEC)

Future

The documentation could get improved, for example by adding a quick start help. Additional features like remote procedure calls could be described and a separate tlog, maybe written in C, would allow logging on any platforms - not only Go supported ones.

Structured Logging

Trice will (hopefully soon) suppport structured logging. Triggered by #531 there is now a specifcation draft. Please provide some critical feedback before the implementaion starts.

Support?

• Yes please - Trice takes a lot of my spare time and I wish to keep it MIT licensed in the future as well.
• If you make profit using Trice in your products, donations would convince my family to proceed with Trice and also secure future improvements.
• ⭐ it. ☺

Become a Sponsor with your Github Account

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OR

Cloning the repo:

git clone https://github.com/rokath/trice.git

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