Author Topic: All-in-one development IDE?  (Read 10458 times)

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Offline ^_^

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #25 on: December 17, 2016, 04:06:28 pm »
Keil has released an Eclipse uVision plug-in several years ago. You start uVision in the background and use Eclipse as a front-end (it does debugging and even simulation).

Bro, i installed it and I think it's so much not worth it.
First, Keil folder jumped to 6.5GB (I don't think it was more than 4GB before) as you need to install some "legacy support", you can't just install the plugin itself (according to the instruction on Keil webpage).
Then this is the list what it can do:
http://www.keil.com/support/man/docs/ecluv/

And I think you can't compile the code beforehand (in just eclipse)! You can debug though, lol?
So you probably need to set up the compiler yourself and the plugin cannot get it working for you through Keil...
This is crap, it should work straight away  :--

Dissapointed.
 

Offline Brutte

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #26 on: December 17, 2016, 08:14:11 pm »
And I think you can't compile the code beforehand (in just eclipse)! You can debug though, lol?
Dissapointed.
Eclipse is not a compiler.
As for wizarding, I'd be surprised if the plug-in did not offer wizarding a "hello world" sample project.

I am sure the structure of the project in uVision is different than in Eclipse CDT so you cannot just copy the project files from uVision to Eclipse or from Eclipse to uVision and expect that to work out of the box.
 

Offline Jeroen3

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #27 on: December 19, 2016, 08:24:27 am »
It would make no sense to copy project from uVision to Eclipse since you can't run RVCT without uVision. (licensing issues)
 

Offline brainwashTopic starter

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #28 on: November 03, 2017, 12:39:03 pm »
Resurrecting this as I've revisited this topic a week ago while getting started with an ESP32.

I think I got a solution to my initial problem: Eclipse + PlatformIO + OpenOCD with a hardware debugger of your choice.
PlatformIO has a debug option, but it's a monthly plan, so I did not even test it.

You can use any IDE you want with PIO, but Eclipse was my choice as I've used it for >10 years.
PIO allows you to use standard C/C++ code and move slowly away from the Arduino environment as your project grows. But you can still use the extensive Arduino library set, which is not worth reinventing. Especially the TFT/EPD libraries.

Debugging is a mixed bag, I'm currently using a Bus Pirate with a custom-built OpenOCD. It's slow and works only 50% of the time. But when it works, it's priceless: you can inspect all variables, step through code, see all the threads, just like you would on a computer. But it took me >12 hours to set everything up, mostly through trial-and-error. And the platform (ESP32) is still in development, not as stable as the other ones.
I've got an Olimex Tiny H on the way as well as a JLink clone, hopefully these will be faster, more reliable and better supported.

Portability is decent: Eclipse CDT is stock, PlatformIO is easy to install, the project configuration files (makefiles and tooling) use a path system that make them usable across machines. Versioning control is done on bitbucket.org , as they have free private repositories. I guess you could host your own, a server costs 5$/mo at digitalocean and you can do a lot with it.

Ease of use - currently the best compromise I could find. You can start a project in Arduino (if you want a dirty prototype), create a new project with "pio init" and copy the arduino files over. Maybe make a small change to the platformio.ini file and then just click "Build" and "Upload". Unfortunately you have no direct control over the Makefile, AFAIK. But that's beyond my paygrade anyway...
 

Offline NorthGuy

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #29 on: November 03, 2017, 04:01:00 pm »
Debugging is a mixed bag, I'm currently using a Bus Pirate with a custom-built OpenOCD. It's slow and works only 50% of the time. But when it works, it's priceless: you can inspect all variables, step through code, see all the threads, just like you would on a computer. But it took me >12 hours to set everything up, mostly through trial-and-error. And the platform (ESP32) is still in development, not as stable as the other ones.
I've got an Olimex Tiny H on the way as well as a JLink clone, hopefully these will be faster, more reliable and better supported.

Assuming your time is worth $100/hr, $1200 for something which is slow and works only 50% of the time doesn't strike me as a good solution.
 

Offline brainwashTopic starter

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #30 on: November 03, 2017, 05:05:30 pm »
I guess contributing open-source is like throwing away suitcases of money...

That time wasn't spent in vain, it now takes me 10-20 minutes to set up a new project with debugging on any 32-bit platform of my choice. Also, some hardware debuggers work better than others, for specific platforms, swapping them now takes 5 minutes.

Learning how to patch and compile OpenOCD - well, arguably a niche skill. But I do this as a hobby, I imagine there are professionals who just whiz through this.
Anyway, in total, those 12 hours will probably save me at least 12 hours in debugging issues, in the future. And if I share the knowledge, the benefits multiply.
 

Offline JoeO

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #31 on: November 03, 2017, 06:14:17 pm »
Debugging is a mixed bag, I'm currently using a Bus Pirate with a custom-built OpenOCD. It's slow and works only 50% of the time. But when it works, it's priceless: you can inspect all variables, step through code, see all the threads, just like you would on a computer. But it took me >12 hours to set everything up, mostly through trial-and-error. And the platform (ESP32) is still in development, not as stable as the other ones.
I've got an Olimex Tiny H on the way as well as a JLink clone, hopefully these will be faster, more reliable and better supported.

Assuming your time is worth $100/hr, $1200 for something which is slow and works only 50% of the time doesn't strike me as a good solution.
Do you have or know of a better solution?
The day Al Gore was born there were 7,000 polar bears on Earth.
Today, only 26,000 remain.
 

Offline brainwashTopic starter

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #32 on: November 03, 2017, 07:10:49 pm »
Just to be clear, by 50% I mean it fails on debugger startup, try it a few times and it runs fine. Once it's started there's no issue with it, except the slowness. It's ok for development, not ok for problem reproduction.
 

Offline jaycee

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #33 on: November 16, 2017, 08:58:48 pm »
For AVR, i use code::blocks to drive the Atmel AVR gcc toolchain. code::blocks will drive pretty much any GCC based toolchain, and a few others as well, including the Microsoft compiler.
 

Offline ElektroQuark

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #34 on: November 17, 2017, 12:21:53 pm »
And Code::Blocks is really lightweight and fast. You can use it with GCC and SEGGER J-LINK and SEGGER Ozone debugger.

Offline spongman

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #35 on: November 17, 2017, 04:40:37 pm »
i have used the PlatformIO Atom plugin for arduino-like stuff in the past (arduino, mbed, esp8266 rtos & stm32cube). it trivializes installing those frameworks and 3rd party libaries and the code editor is half decent.

for me, it's a no-brainer drop-in replacement for the arduino abomination.
 

Offline CM800

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #36 on: November 17, 2017, 04:44:44 pm »
Visual GDB covers a whole load of different standard chips, including Linux and Android projects.
 

Offline technix

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Re: All-in-one development IDE?
« Reply #37 on: November 20, 2017, 07:27:27 pm »
For me stock Eclipse CDT have great milage. I use macOS as the development system so there is no Keil available for me - only GCC for most platforms, and I will stick to cross-platform software here so you can use it on Windows too. I have AVR + ARM up now so it covers your AVR, Stellaris, Tiva and STM32.

The ARM stuff is a lot easier thanks to the GNU MCU Eclipse project. That plugin gives stock Eclipse support to generate the appropriate makefiles for ARM, and getting stuff up is usually a three-minute job if you have a template ready. You also get debugging with either J-Link or OpenOCD along with GDB. OpenOCD is actually extremely versatile as it supports almost all debug probe imaginable.

For AVR you do need to write the makefiles yourself. Debugging is achievable with avarice and GDB, however you will need to build avarice from source if you want to use Atmel ICE. I even had to change the code a bit to make it recognize libhidapi as well as properly enumerate the Atmel ICE device under macOS.
 


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