Freescale CMSIS-SVD Register Files with Eclipse MARS and EmbSysRegView

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Erich Styger

In “How to Add Register Details View in Eclipse” I showed how to add the Register detail support in Eclipse using the EmbSysRegView plugin. This was for Luna/Mars, and for the version v0.2.4 of the plugins.

Since then, there is a new version of Eclipse (MARS, see “Going to Mars: Building a DIY Eclipse IDE for ARM Embedded Microcontrollers“) and the EmbSysRegView plugin has been updated to v2.0.5. Makes everything much simple, so here is an updated post with the details how to add register detail view to Eclipse Mars.

Eclipse Mars

Installation

Use the menu Help > Install new software and use the following update site to install the viewer and data files:

 http://embsysregview.sourceforge.net/update

This installs a set of Freescale SVD files inside this folder (at least on my Windows 7 machine):

<install>\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.cdt.embsysregview.data_0.2.5.r180\data\SVD(CMSIS)\Freescale

Freescale SVD Files

Freescale includes newer and added SVD files in their KDS v3.0.0 or Processor Expert for KDS v3.0.x releases. If you have installed Processor Expert plugin (see “Going to Mars: Building a DIY Eclipse IDE for ARM Embedded Microcontrollers“), then you have the files

<install>\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.cdt.embsysregview.data_0.2.4.freescale\data\SVD(CMSIS)\Freescale

So what I did is the following:

Renamed the ‘Freescale’ folder in the v0.2.4 plugin to ‘Freescale.0.2.4’
Copied the Freescale from the 0.2.4 plugin

Renamed and Copied Freescale Folder

That way I keep the original files and have the new files added. And I can switch between them in the EmbSysRegView settings:

Both Freescale Folders

If you don’t have Processor Expert, then you find a collection of SVD files on SourceForge.

EmbSysReg Viewer

Summary

EmbSysRegView already comes with a set of Freescale SVD files. To get the latest and newest devices, the above article explains how to install them into a DIY Eclipse installation.

Happy Registering 🙂

PS: The GNU ARM Eclipse plugins come with a nice register viewer too. I plan to feature that register detail viewer in a next post, so stay tuned 🙂

26 thoughts on “Freescale CMSIS-SVD Register Files with Eclipse MARS and EmbSysRegView”

motocoder on September 17, 2015 at 02:00 said:

It is worth mentioning where these plug-in files can be found. I am sure it is different for Linux, but on my machine they were at:
%userprofile%\.p2\pool\plugins\org.eclipse.cdt.embsysregview.data_0.2.5.r180\data\SVD(CMSIS)\Freescale

Note the “.” in front of p2.

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- Erich Styger on September 17, 2015 at 18:51 said:
  
  I used the path on my Windows 7 machine, and for sure it is something different on Linux.
  
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Alexey on September 17, 2015 at 12:26 said:

nice news!Thank you very much!!!

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TM on September 17, 2015 at 13:40 said:

Hi Erich – small typo:

> the EmbSysRegView plugin has been updated to v2.0.5.

Should read v0.2.5.

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Roberto Paolinelli on September 28, 2015 at 16:46 said:

Hi Erich!
Nice post as usual.
Just one question about this plugin: is it possible to watch Cortex Mx core registers too?
I mean R0…R12, PC, SP, LR, PRIMASK and so on.

Thanks a lot
Best Regards
Roberto

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- Erich Styger on September 28, 2015 at 20:37 said:
  
  No, for this you need to use the normal ‘Register’ view, as all these registers are not memory mapped. The EmbSysRegView works on memory mapped registers only.
  
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  - Roberto Paolinelli on September 29, 2015 at 09:14 said:
    
    OK Erich.
    Thanks a lot!
    
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Manuel Malagon on March 2, 2016 at 06:17 said:

Hello Erich

The plugin is not working on GNU ARM eclipse. It shows the registers but none is being updated, I double click on PCR22 for example and it turns green but there isn’t any number showing in HEX nor Bin. Do you have any idea of what could be happening?

Thanks!!

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- Erich Styger on March 2, 2016 at 07:24 said:
  
  Hi Manuel,
  you only can read register values if you are debugging and connected to the target.
  Erich
  
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  - Manuel Malagon on March 2, 2016 at 16:01 said:
    
    Hello Erich
    
    I’m debugging and connected to the target, I have no idea why it is not working. Is this affected by the debugger I’m using? Because I have flashed the debug mcu with the open segger j-link.
    
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    - Erich Styger on March 2, 2016 at 19:34 said:
      
      I’m using Segger J-Linkn too, and do not have problems. Have you selected the correct CPU in the EmbSysRegVîew?
      
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    - Manuel Malagon on March 2, 2016 at 20:05 said:
      
      Yes I have selected the correct CPU. I got frustrated and installed KDS to see if it works fine and the EmbSysRegView is working correctly.
      
      It’s just that I have my eclipse marte setup to work in projects for STM32, PIC32 and Kinetis and I’d like to get it to work with this eclipse since I would like to avoid have multiple IDEs installed, specially if I can work with just one with the right plugins installed.
      
      Also the “Peripherals” view causes “arm-none-eabi-gdb.exe” to crash in the eclipse marte, therefore I can’t see the peripheral registers anywhere.
      
      Thanks!
      
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    - Erich Styger on March 2, 2016 at 20:08 said:
      
      So it might be indeed a gdb problem. KDS is using an older GNU ARM Embedded (launchpad) version. I have seen several crashes in the latest gdb too, so this might be related.
      
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John Brown on March 23, 2016 at 20:37 said:

Just added this, but also can’t read the actual values. Nothing in the hex or bin columns. Is this because it doesn’t work with P&E Open SDA interface, possibly?

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- Erich Styger on March 24, 2016 at 05:47 said:
  
  Hi John,
  I have not seen any issues, I can use it with OpenOCD, P&E and Segger including OpenSDA. The plugin does not depend at all on the debug probe, as long as it is able to read/write memory through GDB.
  Erich
  
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  - John Brown on March 24, 2016 at 07:58 said:
    
    Strange. It shows the values of the general registers(r0, sp etc), but none of the EmbSys Registers…
    I take it the general registers are specified elsewhere, e.g. in the Cortex M0+ definitions?
    
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    - Erich Styger on March 24, 2016 at 08:09 said:
      
      The general CPU registers (r0, etc) are not memory mapped, and are accessed differently.
      So something seems to go wrong with the EmbSysRegView accessing memory. You might check the console view (GDB and GDB traces).
      This gives a log what is happening with GDB. You can turn on GDB traces with Help > Preferences > C/C++ > Debug > GDB > Enable GDB traces.
      Maybe this shows why the memory access is not working?
      Check as well if your Memory view is able to access the peripheral register space.
      
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    - John Brown on March 24, 2016 at 16:19 said:
      
      Just me being stupid. I didn’t realize one had to double-click. In my defence, I will say that there is no double-click required for General Registers….
      
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    - Erich Styger on March 25, 2016 at 10:02 said:
      
      Yes, you have to double click. This might be confusing at the beginning, but it makes sense only to read the values from the registers which are needed. Because reading registers could cause some side effects.
      
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    - John Brown on March 25, 2016 at 12:55 said:
      
      Another dumb question. When debugging under KDS, using the PE Open SDA, does the target run at full speed(obviously not when paused or single stepping)? My USB HID port to the FRDM-KL26Z seems to work 100 times better if I connect ONLY the target USB cable, and not the Open SDA one.
      
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    - Erich Styger on March 25, 2016 at 14:02 said:
      
      Hi John,
      I have not noticed something like this. But make sure you don’t have any watchpoints or other things active on the debugger side which would do periodic checks of the target. Maybe you have a view open which does start/stop your target. Try closing as many open views in Eclipse to find out which one could be the one affecting your target. The other thing is: you could enable GDB traces (Window > Preferences > C/C++ > Debug > GDB) and then check the console view if something is accessing your target in the background.
      
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John Brown on March 23, 2016 at 20:38 said:

Should have said – using KDS

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