A practical guide to understanding how West, Kconfig, and prj.conf work together in Zephyr RTOS projects. West acts as the workspace and build manager, Kconfig handles compile-time feature configuration with dependency resolution, and prj.conf provides application-level overrides. The guide uses an NXP FRDM-MCXN947 board as a concrete example, covers menuconfig and guiconfig tools for exploring available options, and compares Zephyr's layered configuration approach to FreeRTOS's flat FreeRTOSConfig.h model. Practical next steps include setting up a project with MCUXpresso for VS Code, experimenting with Kconfig tools, and refining prj.conf settings.
Table of contents
Understanding the Zephyr Build and Configuration EcosystemWest: The Modern Build System ManagerKconfig: The System Wide Configuratorproj.conf: Application Specific ConfigurationZephyr vs FreeRTOS Configuration ApproachesYour Next StepsAdditional Resources10 Impressions