Debugging with Eclipse

Owned by Natalia Sofronova
Last updated: Jun 20, 2024
5 min read

 

This application note describes how to use Eclipse for building and debugging applications for Emcraft Cortex-M BSPs.

1. Installing Eclipse IDE

Download and install a Linux version of the Eclipse IDE to the Linux host.

The latest version of Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers can be found here:

Eclipse Packages | The Eclipse Foundation - home to a global community, the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE and over 350 open source projects...

2. Creating a Project in Eclipse

Perform the following steps to create a single file project in Eclipse.

  1. Start Eclipse and select a workspace directory, different from the directory where your source file is located.

  2. To create an empty project, open File -> New -> C/C++ Project, select С Managed Build and click Next.

    image-20240620-104405.png

  3. In C Project window enter a name of the project, for example, c-example, select Empty Project -> Cross GCC and click Finish.

    image-20240620-104619.png

  4. On this step you are prompted to choose build configurations. Click Next to proceed with the default settings.

  5. In the Cross GCC Command dialog, enter arm-buildroot-uclinuxfdpiceabi- in the Cross compiler prefix box and
    /usr/local/arm-buildroot-uclinuxfdpiceabi_sdk-buildroot/bin in Cross compiler path, click Finish.

  6. To add the source file to the project, open File -> Import. In the Import dialog select General -> File System, click Next.

  7. Click Browse and navigate to the directory where the source file is located (/home/sasha/work in the example below), then select the directory in the left window.

  8. Click Finish to complete.

3. Building the Project

To build the project, press Ctrl-B.

4. Debugging the Project on the Target

On the host filesystem, the executable binaries are located in the Debug subfolder of the Eclipse workspace directory:

% $ ls -1 eclipse-workspace/c-example/Debug/ app.d app.o c-example makefile sources.mk subdir.mk $

In the directory above, c-example is the binary for Cortex-M target.

For remote debugging, you need to deploy the c-example binary to the target. This can be done in several ways:

  • Using scp or sftp to copy the binary to the target;

  • Using NFS share configured on the host and mounting this share from the target.

4.1. Using NFS

This application note demonstrates how to use NFS to configure share on the host and mount this share from the target.

In the example below, the Eclipse workspace directory, /srv/homes/eclipse-workspace/ is exported as NFS share.

Perform the following step to modify the Linux project to auto-mount the /srv/homes/eclipse-workspace/directory via NFS.

  1. Add the following lines to etc/rc:

    % cd projects/rootfs % vi etc/rc ... sleep 2 mount -o nolock 192.168.0.103:/srv/homes/eclipse-workspace/ /mnt/nfs ...

  2. Rebuild the project.

  3. After loading the project to the target, the Eclipse workspace directory is mounted as /mnt/nfs:

    / # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on 192.168.0.103:/srv/homes/eclipse-workspace/ 488645632 124968960 338781184 27% /mnt/nfs / # ls -la /mnt/nfs/c-example/Debug/ drwxrwxr-x 2 1005 1005 4096 Jun 11 2024 . drwxrwxr-x 4 1005 1005 4096 Jun 11 2024 .. -rw-rw-r-- 1 1005 1005 16 Jun 11 2024 app.d -rw-rw-r-- 1 1005 1005 52048 Jun 11 2024 app.o -rwxrwxr-x 1 1005 1005 41680 Jun 11 2024 c-example -rw-rw-r-- 1 1005 1005 1360 Jun 11 2024 makefile -rw-rw-r-- 1 1005 1005 402 Jun 11 2024 sources.mk -rw-rw-r-- 1 1005 1005 752 Jun 11 2024 subdir.mk / #

4.2. Adding Debug Configuration to the Project

Perform the following steps to add a debug configuration to the Eclipse project:

  1. Open Run -> Debug Configurations -> C/C++ Remote Applications:

  2. Create a new configuration in C/C++ Remote Application by clicking the New launch configuration icon in the upper left part of the window:

  3. In the Main tab, click Select other... to change Using GDB Automatic Remote Debugging Launcher.

  4. In the Select Preferred Launcher dialog, select GDB (DFS) Manual Remote Debugging Launcher and click OK.

  5. In the Debug Configuration window, switch to the Debugger tab and enter the full path to arm-buildroot-uclinuxfdpiceabi-gdb in the GDB debugger box using Browse…. Click Apply.

  6. Select the Connection tab and enter an IP address of you target and gdbserver connection port number. Click Apply.

DO NOT click Debug.

4.3. Debugging on the Target

To start debugging on the target, in the target console window, start gdbserver with the application using the port number specified at Step 6 above:

Return to the Eclipse window and click Debug. Accept an invitation to to switch to the Debug Perspective window.

When started under remote debugger, the program automatically stops at the main() function.

Now you can execute you program with steps, put breakpoints, and examine variables: