Templates and Stationeries with MCU10.2

Classic CodeWarrior used the concept of ‘Stationeries’ or ‘Project Templates’: If I have a project which you want to use as a starting point for ‘Create new project’, then I moved that project into the ‘Stationery’ sub-folder of my classic CodeWarrior. When I did a File > New Project…, it showed up in the project wizard:

My own stationery project in the classic new project wizard

My own stationery project in the classic new project wizard

This is very useful if I have my corporate template or using projects in a classroom environment. How can I do this in eclipse and CodeWarrior for MCU10.2?

Continue reading

Using Parallel Builds: what is optimal?

One of the new features in CodeWarrior for MCU10.2 is the ability to build in parallel. Does not sound exciting? Well, when I tried this the first time in MCU10.2, I noticed immediately the reduction in build time: twice as fast compared to MCU10.1!!!. Wow! This improvement is based on using a make utility which can spawn multiple jobs on multicore host machines. CodeWarrior tries to use an optimized setting to make the build as fast as possible using parallel builds. The question is: is it really optimal?

Continue reading

MCU10.2 Update 1.0.0 released

The update 1.0.0 for the MCU10.2 release has been published on the Freescale CW MCU V10.2 Updates & Patches web site. Downloading the 500 MByte zip file and installing the update will take a while. After downloading I select Help > Install New Software … and specify the archive file.

Note: In general uninstalling an eclipse update is not possible. If you want to keep our original MCU10.2 on the side, then follow this trick: Copy your existing MCU10.2 installation folder and rename it (say to ‘MCU10.2_without_update’). Then apply the update to the normal MCU10.2. If you want to revert to the version without the update, simple delete the updated installation and rename the one without the update again. No need to reinstall things again. And you can use both the updated version and the normal version in parallel too: simply launch the eclipse\cwide you want 🙂

Time to read the release notes and dig into what has been changed and improved.

Continue reading

Scripting: The Debugger Shell, Getting started…

(This is the first in an occasional series around the scripting in eclipse and CodeWarrior. Post a comment – let me know what you think!)

Writing code should be fun, and debugging it is just a necessity because I rarely get it right the first time. Eclipse with its GUI is a great thing, and so is a command line interface. Luckily the CodeWarrior eclipse engineers have added that kind of tool for the CodeWarrior debugger: the Debugger Shell as command line debugger using the TCL scripting language. This gives me a powerful way to deal with the embedded target board: from basic access to memory, to stepping and controlling the execution up to programming the flash memory.

Continue reading

Sneaking from Processor Expert

Processor Expert is great: it generates initialization code and driver sources for me. This makes it a great knowledge and source base for non-Processor Expert projects too. Wondering how to initialize the SCI? What are again the register settings to use the CPU with a 6 MHz clock rate using an external crystal in low power mode? Lets generate a Processor Expert project to find out. Then copy-past the drivers or parts of it into my non-Processor Expert project. But How to do this?

Continue reading

Linting without a plugin

With “Eclipse and PC-lint: Linticator” I have a plugin to lint my sources in a comfortable way. But I can do this as well without a plugin. For this I use a batch file with a build configuration, plus settings to get the PC-lint messages into the Problems view. Yes, this does not sound easy, but is very doable and straight forward once I have set it up. It gives me complete control on every little detail. Here is how I do it… Continue reading

Quick Access (CTRL+3)

It is Easter time, and here is my Easter Gift in eclipse: Quick Access. If you are one of those developers who hate the mouse and want to do everything with your hands on the keyboard: this is definitely something for you. I admit that I had not noticed that feature, as it is buried behind menus. It is such a great functionality in eclipse (thanks for the hint, Teo!), but easily gets missed.

Continue reading

Offline Registers

The eclipse based CodeWarrior for MCU10.2 comes with many unique extensions of the eclipse platform, implemented by Freescale. One of these featured mentioned in my post is the ability to inspect the registers in an offline mode: The Offline Register view. How is this different from the Registers view?

Continue reading