Tag Archives: Debugging

Eclipse Debugging with Strings – Part 2

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Maybe a better title for this post would be “Eclipse Debugging with Strings Attached’? Digging a bit more into the domain of string debugging, things are not always the way I wish they are.

I’m using here CodeWarrior for MCU10.2, which is based on Eclipse 3.6. Let’s use the following piece of code with the ARM Cortex-M4 Kinetis K60 core and the Freescale ARM compiler:

char buf[] = "abcd";
char *p = &buf[0];

unsigned char ubuf[]="ABCD";
unsigned char *up = &ubuf[0];

signed char sbuf[]="1234";
signed char *sp = &sbuf[0];

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Eclipse Debugging with Strings

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Here I am: past midnight, and debugging why my Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 K60N512 application. So now you know what keeps me up at night :-). Stepping through some code which is using all kind of strings:

Debugging the K60 with Eclipse and CodeWarrior

Debugging the K60 with Eclipse and CodeWarrior

The challenge is: how to debug my strings?

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A Shell for the Freedom KL25Z Board

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I’m a big fan of physical UART/RS-232 ports on boards. So I was somewhat disappointed not to see a serial 9pin connector on the Freedom KL25Z board. But it is perfectly understood that for this price costs are critical, and a serial header or connector is pushing the budget for that board very likely out of the water. Still, I want serial connectivity for my applications.

Freedom Board with RGB LED

Freedom Board with RGB LED

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CodeWarrior Flash Programming from a DOS Shell

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I can do test automation or standalone flash programming using the Debugger Shell. But this requires me to use a view inside of Eclipse. What would be nice is to do such things from a lower level: from a Windows Command window (CMD or DOS Shell). This is possible with usage of Eclipse/CodeWarrior in command line mode.

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Standalone Flash Programmer

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In Scripting, the Debugger Shell and Debugger Shell: Test Automation I was exploring how to use the Debugger Shell for automation. For my lectures at the university I need to program multiple boards with the same application. I don’t want (and need) a debugger for this: all what I need is a ‘Standalone Flash Programmer’: the ability to flash one or multiple boards without debugging.

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Debugger Shell: Test Automation

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The development cycle does not end with debugging. Debugging is something manual, but for testing and automation I want to develop scripts I can run in an automated fashion. For this I use a tool in CodeWarrior: the Debugger Shell as command line debugger and using TCL as scripting language. This gives me a powerful way into automation and scripting with the debugger: from basic access to memory, to stepping and controlling the execution up to programming the flash memory.

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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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