My preferred suite (i.e. what I use for my own work) comprises:
stand-alone editor
gcc/mingw and make/gnubinutils
gdb
Another thing I like about the above is that you can preserve your
*entire* project in a very small, text-only, portable archive - no
'magic' files, binaries etc - and gels nicely with cvs/svn etc. IDEs
generally make this impossible.
And don't get me started on absolute pathnames in projects...
Regards,
--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
Reply by Steve Calfee●October 4, 20062006-10-04
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:54:13 +1000, Mark McDougall <markm@vl.com.au>
wrote:
>
>However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
>as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
>
>I got so fed up trying to control the debugger I reverted to using
>printf's, except where using the debugger was absolutely necessary. I
>didn't even use the editor - it was *painfully* slow on a 3.2GHz
>machine!!! At the end of it all, I used Eclipse to click on 'build' and
>'download' and that's about it. And then I washed my hands - thoroughly!
>
>[dons flame-retardant underwear]
>
I have to agree. The concept is bad. I guess everyone (well, company
marketing departments) wants to be like microsoft and have a "do
everything" IDE. I actually use MS Visual studio 6, I don't love it
but it requires relatively little memorisation of magic keys and it
works. However, I just use it as an editor, I don't do windows
programming. (I could easily go into a rant about how bad magic ide
accelerator key stuff can be -- do I really need a 1 keystroke entry
into a font editor? but I digress).
I think the ultimate perfect editor is EMACs, but I refuse to waste
all those neurons on memorizing key sequences. What I want in an
editor is for the common stuff to be easy (like non-modal WYSIWYG
editing) and the hard stuff to be available in menus. A few things are
nice with single key accelerators (like search, search next, search
prev).
Codewarrior and codecomposer are similar in concept to Eclipse. Both
are annoying. Nothing like waiting for seconds for all the dlls to
load. And nothing like loading tons of dlls and who knows what into an
already full windows registry!
The basic IDE concept is bad. It completely breaks any concept of
scripting. It violates all the good parts of separating mechanism and
policy. If you really need one button push to start a compile, the OS
probably can do that. An IDE makes several simple tasks complicated. I
can live without a fancy debugger interface, if I can get one that
works predicably with problematic hardware.
There are about 3 things an ide does. First it is an editor, I cannot
imagine anything more personal and unchangeable, except maybe
religion. Second it is a "build" interface - which in any kind of
reasonably complex scenario is a one button start of "make" and last
is a debugger interface. I am particularly sensitive about this one,
on my list of important capabilities number one is reliable. All other
debugger features are optional and "nice". Maybe there are other
"features" in a IDE, but usually they are just automating simple OS
commands.
I have installed eclipse (on Linux) about 3 times over the last couple
years. Each time it was buggy, hard to understand and unneccessarily
complex. Each time it was different though. It is easy to understand
how companies that really wish they had a codewarrior would like to
adopt Eclipse. It is just too much complexity in the development
environment, where many other complex things need to be done.
It will be a while before I install it on Windows. You don't know how
I hate to have to install yet another IDE on my fragile, full Windows
XP registry. If I can I avoid it.
Steve
There is no "x" in my email address.
Reply by Mark McDougall●September 30, 20062006-09-30
Peter Dickerson wrote:
> I think the trick is 3 gig of RAM rather than 3 GHz processor.
I have two!!!! :O
Regards,
--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
Reply by Peter Dickerson●September 29, 20062006-09-29
"Ian Bell" <ruffrecords@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:451d3f24.0@entanet...
> Ted wrote:
>
> > Mark McDougall wrote:
> >
> >> However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
> >> as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
> >
> > I'm trying hard to like Eclipse (or WindRiver Workbench as its badged)
> > at the moment. Having been arm-twisted into spending the 4 grand to
> > upgrade from our previous "soon to be no longer supported" environment.
> >
> >
> > It is so slow. (on a 3 gig machine) I seem to spen ages waiting for the
> > frequent lock ups to resolve themselves, and reading the "out of
> > Virtual memory" warnings.
> >
>
> Ah, the joys of Java.
I think the trick is 3 gig of RAM rather than 3 GHz processor.
Peter
Reply by Ian Bell●September 29, 20062006-09-29
Ted wrote:
> Mark McDougall wrote:
>
>> However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
>> as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
>
> I'm trying hard to like Eclipse (or WindRiver Workbench as its badged)
> at the moment. Having been arm-twisted into spending the 4 grand to
> upgrade from our previous "soon to be no longer supported" environment.
>
>
> It is so slow. (on a 3 gig machine) I seem to spen ages waiting for the
> frequent lock ups to resolve themselves, and reading the "out of
> Virtual memory" warnings.
>
Ah, the joys of Java.
Ian
Reply by Ted●September 28, 20062006-09-28
Mark McDougall wrote:
> However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
> as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
I'm trying hard to like Eclipse (or WindRiver Workbench as its badged)
at the moment. Having been arm-twisted into spending the 4 grand to
upgrade from our previous "soon to be no longer supported" environment.
It is so slow. (on a 3 gig machine) I seem to spen ages waiting for the
frequent lock ups to resolve themselves, and reading the "out of
Virtual memory" warnings.
Its funny isn't it? Sometimes you struggle with terrible tools for
ages, thinking its your own fault and that perhaps you don't understand
the wonder and beauty of the thing. And then looking back you realise
that it was a pile of cack all along.
Cheers
TW
Reply by Alf Katz●September 28, 20062006-09-28
"Mark McDougall" <markm@vl.com.au> wrote in message
news:451b71b3$0$15612$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
> John wrote:
>
>> Please help a frustrated engineer out. I'm not ready to give up (yet),
>> I think there's hope here...
>
> I might not be able to offer anything constructive other than a summary
> of my experiences. I was using Eclipse as part of Altera's NIOS SDK.
>
> 1. I did not have your problem of having to kill the debug perspective
> to re-build the target.
> 2. I don't think I ever tried to pause!
> 3. To restart, IIRC I simply downloaded again.
>
> However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
> as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
>
> I got so fed up trying to control the debugger I reverted to using
> printf's, except where using the debugger was absolutely necessary. I
> didn't even use the editor - it was *painfully* slow on a 3.2GHz
> machine!!! At the end of it all, I used Eclipse to click on 'build' and
> 'download' and that's about it. And then I washed my hands - thoroughly!
>
> [dons flame-retardant underwear]
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Mark McDougall, Engineer
> Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
> 21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
> Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
I'm with you Mark,
Waited for it to load, Tried it, chewed it, spat it out, and waited for
it to unload. It was just so laborious to do anything.
Maybe it's just us Aussies, though.
Cheers,
Alf
Reply by Mark McDougall●September 28, 20062006-09-28
John wrote:
> Please help a frustrated engineer out. I'm not ready to give up (yet),
> I think there's hope here...
I might not be able to offer anything constructive other than a summary
of my experiences. I was using Eclipse as part of Altera's NIOS SDK.
1. I did not have your problem of having to kill the debug perspective
to re-build the target.
2. I don't think I ever tried to pause!
3. To restart, IIRC I simply downloaded again.
However, IMHO, Eclipse is an absolute POS. If I wasn't forced to use it
as part of the SDK then I wouldn't touch it with a 10-ft clown pole.
I got so fed up trying to control the debugger I reverted to using
printf's, except where using the debugger was absolutely necessary. I
didn't even use the editor - it was *painfully* slow on a 3.2GHz
machine!!! At the end of it all, I used Eclipse to click on 'build' and
'download' and that's about it. And then I washed my hands - thoroughly!
[dons flame-retardant underwear]
Regards,
--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
Reply by John●September 28, 20062006-09-28
Hi,
If you use Eclipse (the IDE, especially for embedded use, I would really
appreciate your responses.
I now have Eclipse(Zylin Embedded CDT) + OpenOCD talking to my LPC2103
(ARM7-TDMI), but I'm experiencing what seems like shortcomings in
Eclipse. Maybe others here who use Eclipse for embedded development can
shed some light.
1. Is there an "easy" way to automate the build, compile and
debug/attach process
As is, if I am debugging and I find a mistake in the code and I switch
to C perspective to fix it, when I do a build, it cannot create the
final executable because the debug perspective seems to open the file
with exclusive access.
I have to kill the debug perspective, re-compile, re-load OpenOCD and
re-attach the debugger. It may sound like I'm whining, but it really
becomes a chore and consumes a lot of time. It really interrupts the
thought process. I also end up getting gdb or Eclipse to lock up (I hit
the stop button and it doesn't stop for example) and I have to kill
Eclipse and start-over, each time.
With my Atmel AVR setup, I can re-compile and AVR Studio detects the
main executable is changed and re-programs the AVR, and restarts the
debugging process, all almost automatically.
I've even used the ST development tools which use GDB and they're able
to do all of what I need as well (stop, pause, resume, re-program/build
without issue).
I'd love to script the process if that's what is needed, but I'm
clueless how to do that in Eclipse.
2. When debugging with Eclipse, are you able to "pause" a program and
then resume it?
When I select the main thread (the only thread) and hit the pause button
(||), nothing seems to happen and the program keeps executing. Perhaps
my definition of pause is skewed, but when using AVR Studio, pause means
the program is stopped, I can inspect variables, registers memory and
see where the program currently is. This is handy if the hardware stops
responding, I can figure out where it died.
Any pointers or ideas?
3. Also when debugging, how does one simply restart the program,
without needing to re-compile, re-load, etc?
The big red STOP button does not seem to work, I just want to "reset"
the program and start from main.
Please help a frustrated engineer out. I'm not ready to give up (yet),
I think there's hope here...
Regards,
John.