Tag Archives: Debugging

Software and Hardware Breakpoints

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Using breakpoints is central part of debugging. I’m usually debugging my applications in flash memory. Because nearly all the microcontrollers I use have on-chip flash memory, and have more flash than RAM. With debugging in flash I limited by the number of hardware breakpoints. And here is the advantage with debugging code in RAM: availability of ‘unlimited’ software breakpoints. But how does this all works, and how to make efficient usage of hardware breakpoints?

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Watching Static Variables

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Debugging static variables, especially ‘static locals’ is sometimes challenging. Especially ‘static local’ debugging depends on the compiler capability how they are encoded in to the object file. I have found out that at least with CodeWarrior for MCU and ARM/Kinetis this works straight forward. Only ‘Watch Expressions’ need special attention.

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FreeRTOS with GCC, Cortex-M0+ and Kinetis KL25Z Freedom Board

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Yesterday was my ‘lucky day’: My Kinetis-L Freedom board arrived :-). This board is really nice and features the KL25Z from the recently announced Kinetis L Family. And guess what is the first thing I want to flash on that processor? Yep: some FreeRTOS tasks. But to get there, a few important things have to be sorted out:

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There is an ARM to Trace

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When I added ‘support for ARM/Kinetis‘ to my bucket list in my Percepio+Trace post, I knew it will not be straight forward. But it was a lot harder than I thought. I had to burn many week-end hours. But finally I have Percepio Trace with FreeRTOS up and running for Kinetis and ARM Cortex-M4 with CodeWarrior for MCU10.2 :-).

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Breakpoints with Special Effects

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As promised back in Percepio, I want to have it ported and working with the Freescale Cortex-M4/Kinetis in CodeWarrior. That’s what I’m working on now, deep into the night. While doing this, I had to generate a lot of trace data, and I used the script I presented in that earlier post: Setting a breakpoint in the trace buffer wrapper event and then export the data. But there has to be an even better way, and indeed there is one: Breakpoints with Special Effects!

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Debugging Global Variables

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If I’m debugging my application in Eclipse or CodeWarrior, it shows in the Variables view the local and global variables of the current Thread and stack frame only:

Debug View with Variables View

Debug View with Variables View

This makes sense as this is usually where my focus is. And this is good from a performance point of view: The debugger does not need to read a lot of other variables from the target which I’m not interested in. But the question is: how to show the variables which are in other files if I really need to look at them?

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Percepio FreeRTOS+Trace V2.2.2 released

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Percepio has released a new V2.2.2 library of FreeRTOS+Trace (see Tracing with FreeRTOS+Trace from Percepio). The new release comes with many improvements. The trace recording is optimized for more efficient recording and longer trace with the same amount of memory.

Note: Because the trace data structure is changed and optimized, I need the latest tool on the PC/host from http://www.percepio.com.

I have updated the Percepio Processor Expert component to generate and use the new trace library V2.2.2. This includes the new settings in the component properties as shown below:
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Killing Me Softly: Zombies and Debugger Engines

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I’m stressing the CodeWarrior debugger a lot: having multiple boards attached, debugging things in parallel, switching and unplugging boards all the time. I have my eclipse IDE running for several days and nights (up to a week or more), with constantly suspending and resuming and switching networks. And sometimes it is my fault (see Device is Secure?). But well, sometimes the CodeWarrior debugger has a problem too. Luckily, a simple trick gets things back on track.

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