To increase the usability and to provide an environment for rapidly and efficiently developing software for embedded systems, the Integrated Development Environment Eclipse and Code::Blocks is part of our toolchains for

• TriCore
• ARM
• PowerPC

Editor

• Several projects in the same workspace
• TortoiseSVN support
• Split View
• Hex Editor
• Code completion
• Symbol browser for functions, variables
• Code snippets
• Source code formatter

Project management

• Save user-defined projects as templates
• Multi-target projects
• Support project dependencies
• To-do list management with different users

The IDE is available for TriCore, ARM and PowerPC on cross-platform Windows and Linux.

Eclipse Features

DAvE Importer

If projects generated with DAvE are imported into Eclipse, all the configuration information will be included in the Eclipse project settings. Only 3 steps are necessary for debugging a DAvE project.

• Import DAvE project
• Build project
• Start debugger via PLS button

Powerful Wizards

When using the project wizards, you only have to choose your derivative and type of flash; the corresponding startup-code as well as the memory layout for RAM and ROM will then be included in the build targets. Once these steps are completed, all you have to do is compile the generated project and press the PLS button to start a debug session.

Model driven Linker Description File

The fact that any modification of the memory layout for embedded systems is rather error-prone, induced us to develop a model-driven GUI to describe the memory layout. This description will be verified against the derivative memory layout and will assist you in placing the code and data in the appropriate regions of the memory.

Code::Blocks Features

F1 Help

Since all documentation and help within our toolchains use the Windows format, you can select a keyword in the Code::Blocks editor and find the references as well as the corresponding documentation by simply pressing the <F1> key.

SVN support

TortoiseSVN plug-in for Code::Blocks provides full support of SVN commands.

HexEditor

With the HexEditor integrated in Code::Blocks you can view and modify your files with ease.

ThreadSearch

The ThreadSearch plugin offers the following features:

• Multi-threaded ’Search in files’
• Internal read-only editor to preview the results
• Context menu ’Find occurrences’ for starting a file search with the word marked by the cursor

Symbol View

The Code::Blocks Management window offers a tree view for symbols of C/C++ sources for navigating via functions or variables. The current file or project can be defined as the scope of the view, or alternatively the whole workspace. The following categories are available for the symbols:

File Explorer

The File Explorer can be found in the ’Files’ tab. The path can be entered in a field at the top. When opening the drop-down field, a history of the past entries will be listed.  In the ’Wildcard’ field you can enter a filter term for the file display. Leaving the field empty or entering * results in all files being displayed. Entering, for example, '*.c;*.h' will result in solely C sources and header files being displayed.   Within the file explorer, you can add so-called shell extensions to the context menu. A shell extension is a command which will be executed for a selected file or directories in this explorer. For example, you can add an extension so that selected files or directories are passed to a diff program like kdiff3.

Diff and Merge

Integration of diff program KDiff3 with the following features:

• Compares or merges two or three text input files or directories
• Shows the differences line by line and character by character
• Provides an automatic merge-facility
• Integrated editor for comfortably solving merge-conflicts
• Printing differences
• Automatic merge of version control history ($Log$)

Default Code

The company’s Coding Rules require source files to have a standard layout. Code::Blocks makes it possible to automatically include a predefined content at the beginning of a file when creating new C/C++ sources and headers. This setting can be selected via Settings>Editor Default Code. A new file can be created via the menu command File>New>File.

Astyle

Artistic Style is a source code indenter, source code formatter, and source code beautifier for the C, C++, C# programming languages. It can be used to select different styles of coding rules within Code::Blocks.

Abbreviation

A lot of typing can be saved in CodeBlocks by defining abbreviations. This is done with the aid of the command Settings>Editor and by defining the abbreviations under the name <name>, which can then be called by the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-J.