Eclipse Plug-in for Zephyr Project

Overview

This contains a set of Eclipse plug-ins which extends Eclipse CDT to support application development on Zephyr RTOS, including building and target hardware debugging.

How to Install

Prerequisites

The minimum requirements for running the plugins are:

• Java SE 8 Update 212 or later
• Eclipse 2019-12 (4.14.0) with CDT 9.10.0

Also, please make sure the development host is setup to build Zephyr application by following the Getting Started guide.

Installing the Plugin

The plugin can be installed via update sites in Eclipse.

1. Go to Help in the menu bar, and select Install New Software.
2. Click the Add button to add a new update site:
   • Name: zephyr-eclipse
   • URL: https://builds.zephyrproject.org/eclipse-plugin/
3. Select the newly added update site.
4. Select Zephyr Project and Zephyr Project Development Support and click Next.
5. Follow the instructions on the wizards to install the plugin.
6. Restart Eclipse when asked to do so.

Updating the Plugin

Go to Help in the menu bar, and select Check for Updates.

How to Use

Create a New Project for Zephyr Application

Project creation is similar to creating other project type under Eclipse. This will create a Hello World project.

1. Go to File, New and Project...
2. In the dialog, select Zephyr Application under Zephyr Project.
3. Click Next
4. Type in the name for the project.
5. Under Zephyr Base Path (ZEPHYR_BASE), put in (or browse to) the path to the Zephyr tree.
6. Click Next
7. Select the toolchain variant to be used with this project. Depending on the selection, different set of options will need to be set. These options are the same one as described in the Getting Started - Set Up a Toolchain.
8. Click Next
9. Type in the board name of the targat hardware.
   • Or click on the check box and select one below.
10. Click Finish
11. A new project is created under Eclipse.
12. It is recommended to use the C/C++ perspective.
    1. Go to Window, Perspective, Open Perspective, and Other....
    2. Select C/C++ and click Ok.

Building the Project

• Right click on the project name under Project Explorer and select Build Project.

Run Emulator

1. Right click on the project name under Project Explorer and select Run As, and Run Configurations....
2. Right click on Zephyr Emulator Target, and New.
   • Or, select a previously created configuration.
3. In the newly created configuration, make sure the project is the correct one.
4. Click Run
5. The Console view will contain the output of the emulator.
6. Click the red square Terminate to stop the emulator.

Flash to Hardware

1. Right click on the project name under Project Explorer and select Run As, and Run Configurations....
2. Right click on Zephyr Hardware Target, and New.
   • Or, select a previously created configuration.
3. In the newly created configuration, make sure the project is the correct one.
4. Click Run
5. The Console view will contain the output of the flashing process.

Debugging on Emulator

1. Right click on the project name under Project Explorer and select Debug As, and Debug Configurations....
2. Right click on Zephyr Emulator Target, and New.
   • Or, select a previously created configuration.
3. In the newly created configuration, make sure the project is the correct one, and the C/C++ Application points to the correct ELF file.
4. In the Debugger tab:
   • The GDB Command should be pre-populated with the GDB project discovered by CMake. If not, select the correct GDB program corresponding to the target.
   • Port number is pre-populated according to the target type. Change if it is not correct.
5. Click Debug and the debug session should start.
6. Follow Eclipse's debugging workflow to debug the application.

Debugging on Hardware

1. Right click on the project name under Project Explorer and select Debug As, and Debug Configurations....
2. Right click on Zephyr Hardware Target, and New.
   • Or, select a previously created configuration.
3. In the newly created configuration, make sure the project is the correct one, and the C/C++ Application points to the correct ELF file.
4. In the Main tab, default is to also flash the image to the target. This can be skipped with the appropriate option.
5. In the Debugger tab:
   • The GDB Command should be pre-populated with the GDB project discovered by CMake. If not, select the correct GDB program corresponding to the target.
   • Port number is pre-populated according to the target type. Change if it is not correct.
6. Click Debug and the debug session should start.
7. Follow Eclipse's debugging workflow to debug the application.

How to Build

Prerequisites

The minimum requirements for building the plugins are:

• Java SE 11.0.3
• Maven 3.3.9 or later (except 3.6.1)

Running Maven

$ mvn clean package

The resulting p2 repository is at maven/repository/target/repository.

OpenOCD and Thread awareness

The OpenOCD in the Zephyr SDK can export information on threads for GDB. To utilize this capability, CONFIG_OPENOCD_SUPPORT must be enabled in the project configuration file to export information on threads. Also, the board's openocd configuration file must have the following line:

$_TARGETNAME configure -rtos auto

This line tells OpenOCD to search for exported information on threads.

With the correct configuration mentioned above, information on available threads will be displayed in Eclipse's debug perspective.

Troubleshooting

• Eclipse is not responding after clicking Finish at project creation.

Due to the Zephyr source tree being linked within the project, it may take some time for Eclipse to traverse the whole tree. For example, after running sanity check, the output folder contains a large amount of files for Eclipse to traverse.