Balaji Srinivasan

Nordic Semiconductor (Norway)

Employing self-hosted github runners to test embedded software

In this talk, I will explain how you can test your embedded project using self-hosted github runners on real hardware. Github actions is a powerful feature from Github and is widely used by developers. A github action is typically run on a ‘hosted’ setup where a virtual machine on github’s premises will run a job for you. By using ‘self-hosted’ runners, you can have the test node in your premises and can make them to automated on-target testing. This can come in very handy to get quickly started with your test framework. It can help you in keeping tests and the code under test in the same repo. Docker integration comes built into github actions. So you can run containerized tests very easily. With several third-party (open and closed source) plugins to choose from, self-hosted runners can be considered as a serious option when considering or re-considering test infrastructure for your project.

Balaji is an Embedded software developer with over 18 years of software industry experience. He has been developing and testing firmware for Nordic Semiconductor’s low power wireless chips for the past 11 years. His area of expertise includes Bluetooth Low Energy, cellular IOT, and low level firmware development. He is passionate about CI/CD and test automation. His recent adventures involve writing zephyr RTOS based firmware for constrained devices and automated testing.