Building Projects with Eclipse from the Command Line

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Erich Styger

Eclipse has a great user interface (UI). But what if I want to do things from the command line, without the GUI? For example to build one or more projects in the workspace without using the Eclipse UI? With this, I can do automated check-outs and do automated builds.

Performed a command line project build with Eclipse

The solution to this: there is a command line version of Eclipse which I can use to run Eclipse in the command line version. Inside the eclipse folder on Windows, there is the eclipsec program which is the command-line version of Eclipse:

Eclipsec program, a command line version of Eclipse

The options of this command line version (for Eclipse Kepler) are described here:

http://help.eclipse.org/kepler/index.jsp?topic=%2Forg.eclipse.platform.doc.isv%2Freference%2Fmisc%2Fruntime-options.html

For example

eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data c:\my_wsp -build k64f

will launch Eclipse without splash screen (-nosplash), uses the –application command to load the managed make builder (which is used to build projects), with -data I specify the workspace to be used, and with the -build command it will the project k64f.

Now it could be that things still fail. This is typically because –launcher.ini option is missing which should point to the eclipse .ini file which located in the same folder as eclipsec. For example for Kinetis Design Studio the call could look like this:

c:\freescale\kds_3.0.0\eclipse\eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data .\wsp_kds3.0.0 -build MyProject --launcher.ini c:\Freescale\KDS_3.0.0\eclipse\kinetis-design-studio.ini --launcher.suppressErrors

More options and details are shown here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/344797/build-several-cdt-c-projects-from-commandline

Happy Headlessing 🙂

27 thoughts on “Building Projects with Eclipse from the Command Line”

Liviu Ionescu (ilg) on September 12, 2014 at 09:04 said:

As the -application option suggests, this technique is also called ‘headless build’.

It was tested and confirmed working with GNU ARM Eclipse Plug-ins too.

gnuarmeclipse.livius.net/blog/headless-builds/

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- Erich Styger on September 12, 2014 at 14:00 said:
  
  Hi Liviu,
  thanks for that link (added to the article now), I had missed this one.
  
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Hong Phuc on January 12, 2015 at 10:36 said:

Can I building Projects with KDS from the Command Line? KDS base on Eclipse

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- Erich Styger on January 12, 2015 at 15:47 said:
  
  Yes, the exact same thing works in Kinetis Design Studio too.
  
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  - Hong Phuc on January 21, 2015 at 09:25 said:
    
    I run “eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data D:\phuc\hello_world -build hello_world” but this print in cmd : “No Project matched “hello_world”. Skipping…”. I sure project hello_world exist in D:\phuc\hello_world
    
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    - Erich Styger on January 21, 2015 at 09:44 said:
      
      With the -data you need to specify the *workspace*, not the project.
      
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  - Hong Phuc on January 21, 2015 at 09:51 said:
    
    Thanks. I change this and I get error : “Managed Build system manifest file error: Option ilg.gnuarmeclipse.managedbuild.cross.option.warnings.unitialized.6460917372 uses a null category that
    is invalid in its context. The option was ignored.” I think -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild need be changed!
    
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    - Erich Styger on January 21, 2015 at 10:08 said:
      
      I don’t have that. I have other errors, but I can ignore them, as it builds fine.
      Maybe this is something you should report to the GNU ARM Eclipse plugins?
      
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Kyle on February 26, 2016 at 08:17 said:

Hi Erich

I follow the step by step to build the project from eclipse command line.
But get an error: Program “make” not found in PATH.
My KDS version is 3.1.0.

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- Erich Styger on February 26, 2016 at 08:19 said:
  
  You need to add the make to your PATH. The make is located here:
  “installation path of KDS”\bin
  
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  - Kyle on March 1, 2016 at 02:43 said:
    
    Hi Erich
    
    I copy the make file to my path “KDS_3.0.0\eclipse”.and get another error information as below.
    Did I need to install other SDK package?
    
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    - Erich Styger on March 1, 2016 at 07:17 said:
      
      Copy the make file does not help. You need to make sure that the make executable is in your PATH.
      
      Erich
      
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  - Kyle on March 3, 2016 at 02:19 said:
    
    Hi Erich
    
    Sorry for bother you.
    And…how to make sure that the make executable in my PATH?
    Thanks.
    
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  - Kyle on March 3, 2016 at 04:00 said:
    
    Hi Erich
    
    I fixed the PATH issue after add these two path for “make.exe” and “arm-none-eabi-gcc.exe”.
    C:\Freescale\KDS_3.0.0\bin
    C:\Freescale\KDS_3.0.0\toolchain\bin
    
    Thanks for your help.
    
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- Kyle on March 3, 2016 at 02:30 said:
  
  Hi Erich
  
  I fixed the PATH issue.
  But got build error message as below.
  
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Radu on June 15, 2017 at 13:41 said:

Hi Eric,
I am using KDS 3.2.0 . I would like to be able to build my projects from command line. I am running the following command:

C:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data C:\Work\KDS_Workspace -build –launcher.ini c:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\kinetis-design-studio.ini –launcher.suppressErrors

I get the following message:

Project: doesn’t appear to be a CDT project. Skipping…

Any clues?
Many thanks!

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- Erich Styger on June 15, 2017 at 15:19 said:
  
  Hi Radu,
  I see you not specified a project with the -build argument? You need to specify the project you want to build, e.g.
  -build MyProject
  I hope this helps,
  Erich
  
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  - genune on June 15, 2017 at 21:10 said:
    
    Hi Erich,
    Sorry, I misspelled the command. I am using a project name as argument for build. However for any project I am trying, I get the same error. I’m thinking that’s something I’m not doing right.
    What I would like to actually achieve is to build from command line the MCUXpresso projects. This is the reason why I have started with KDS, as I thought it would be similar to transition from one to the other.
    
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    - Erich Styger on June 15, 2017 at 21:44 said:
      
      Hmm, I have not tried this with the MCUXpresso IDE, but I would assume it would be the same too?
      
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    - Erich Styger on June 16, 2017 at 08:07 said:
      
      MCUXpresso is basically the next-gen LPCXpresso, so the following should apply: https://community.nxp.com/thread/388962
      
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  - Radu on June 16, 2017 at 16:49 said:
    
    Hi Eric,
    I have managed to find the solution to my error. I had to add the project to the workspace.
    
    KDS:
    C:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild
    -data C:\Work\KDS_Workspace
    -import C:\Work\KDS_Workspace\
    -build
    –launcher.ini c:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\kinetis-design-studio.ini –launcher.suppressErrors
    
    MCUXpresso:
    mcuxpressoidec -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild
    -data
    -import
    -cleanBuild
    
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    - Erich Styger on June 16, 2017 at 18:12 said:
      
      Hi Radu,
      thanks for sharing! Could it be that commands you have posted are not complete?
      If your project was not part of the workspace, yes, indeed you have to have it present in the workspace.
      
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  - genune on June 18, 2017 at 14:26 said:
    
    Hi Eric,
    
    I was using “” characters to specify project paths or project names. I believe that when I hit Post button, whatever was written between those characters did not get posted.
    
    Reposting the commands that worked for me:
    
    KDS:
    C:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild
    -data C:\Work\KDS_Workspace
    -import C:\Work\KDS_Workspace\”project folder”
    -build “project name ”
    –launcher.ini c:\Freescale\KDS_v3\eclipse\kinetis-design-studio.ini –launcher.suppressErrors
    
    MCUXpresso:
    mcuxpressoidec -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild
    -data “path to the workspace”
    -import “path to the project ”
    -cleanBuild “project name”
    
    Also the commands are split on multiple lines for readability. One would need to concatenate the command in one line.
    
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    - Erich Styger on June 18, 2017 at 17:54 said:
      
      Many thanks for posting you solution, appreciated!
      
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Pingback: Building Eclipse and MCUXpresso IDE Projects from the Command Line | MCU on Eclipse
Roberto Paolinelli on December 12, 2022 at 08:56 said:

Hi Erich. I’m using MCUxpresso 11.6 and I would like to clean and build all build configurations from command line.
Unfortunately the resul of my command is it only builds the active build configuration despite I’m using project name only instead of projectname/buildcfg.
Of course on the IDE side I can build all of them.

Here is my command:
C:\nxp\MCUXpressoIDE_11.6.0_8187\ide\mcuxpressoidec.exe -nosplash –launcher.suppressErrors -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data C:\Users\rpao\Documents\MCUXpressoIDE_11.6.0_8187\workspace -cleanBuild CDSR_KV42

Where am I wrong?

Thank you very much
Best Regards
Roberto

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- Erich Styger on December 12, 2022 at 17:44 said:
  
  Hi Roberto,
  have you seen https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/user-guide/MCUXPRESSO-IDE-COMMAND-LINE-UG.pdf :
  4. For each project, multiple build configurations can be compiled and build. To control tested
  configurations, you can use build.config property from the generated properties file
  
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