On the TWR-LCD, I’m using a USB MSD bootloader. In Programming part of flash I showed how to download and debug the application on top of the bootloader. But how to debug both the bootloader and the application? At the same time with CodeWarrior for MCU? The magic key is tell CodeWarrior to use ‘Other Executables’.
Having a problem with Eclipse and building files with foreign characters in the file name? If you are developing software, then read and follow this advice:
“Do ❗ NOT ❗ use foreign characters in file names, paths or for anything else!”
What I mean with ‘foreign characters’ are things like éöüàäü, or simply anything which is outside the 7bit ASCII or Windows-1252 code page table, even if they are allowed by the file system of your operating system (e.g. Windows).
Or in other words: only use these characters for file or directory names:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGEHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890_
Whenever I do a debug launch in the Eclipse based CodeWarrior, it takes some time until actually I’m ready to step through my code on the target. Yes, a good part of that is by Eclipse. But another part is that Eclipse helps me to do stupid things (which is a good thing). But say if I know what I’m doing, I could remove some of that safety belts and still doing fine. But only if I know what I’m doing.
A good indicator where Eclipse is spending time is to have a look in the Progress View:
Progress information during launch
It shows an interesting information: ‘Build before Launch’….
Usually I debug and step on C and C++ level: means I step on C/C++ source lines. But sometimes a finer stepping detail is required. What I need is stepping on assembly level. For first time users of Eclipse, that might not be that obvious, so here is the hint:
In the Debug view toolbar (while debugging), there are the normal stepping commands like ‘step’, ‘step over’ or ‘step out’. All these stepping can be performed on assembly instruction level if I enable the ‘Instruction Stepping Mode’:
Instruction Stepping Mode: Assembly level stepping
I have a project working, and then I want to do a copy. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it should be :-(. In order to copy a project with all the settings, some knowledge about the internals of the project structure is required, which is the topic of this post.
In “Copy my Project” I was using a ColdFire V2 project which is not an easy case, as is using a Target Task to flash the microcontroller. Fortunately, all other targets in CodeWarrior for MCU are *not* using target tasks :-). With little help and preparation, a copy a project is not that difficult to do. I’m showing how to do this with the FRDM-KL25Z project I have created in this post.
Eclipse provides in the Editor view great tool tips (called ‘hovers’) which shows what is behind a macro: I can move my mouse over it, and it shows me the content behind it:
Macro Expansion Hover in Editor View
In this post I have found settings for Eclipse Indexer to show the state if defines correctly. Usually I have something like this in my projects:
debug me
So I define the macro DEBUG_ME on the compiler command line. And it is cool to see that the Eclipse editor correctly grays out the code which is not enabled. But for this the Eclipse Editor view needs to know about the macro, but how does this work?
The Kinetis-L is a 32bit microprocessor family, based on ARM Cortex M0+. It comes with ARM gcc in CodeWarrior. Although the Kinetis-L does not have much RAM, it is very possible to use gcc with C++, especially as a programmer I keep the limited RAM amount in mind. So I thought I try C++ and Processor Expert for my Kinetis-L KL25Z Freedom board.
If I select C++ as language in the New Bareboard Project Wizard of CodeWarrior, then I cannot select Processor Expert or Device Initialization:
C++ in the New Project Wizard
That makes somewhat sense, as Processor Expert creates normal C code and C files, but no C++. Still, what if I need C++? This is doable, but with anything advanced, I need to know exactly what I want and what I do. Here is the ‘How to use C++ with Processor Expert’.
There are always hidden treasures in Eclipse, and here is one: By default, variables might look like which is not always what I want:
Variables View
How to change the format to hexadecimal (or any other format)?
There are times when I want to know *exactly* what is inside my source files. In my article on EHEP explains how to get down to the hex bytes of a source file. But in many cases I’m interested to see the non printable/white characters only. Showing white spaces in the sources is easy in Eclipse: I use the ‘Show Whitespace Characters‘ toolbar icon:
Show Whitespace Characters
MCU on Eclipse 