Difference between revisions of "Developing Cortex M3 Applications Using Visual Studio Code"

Revision as of 03:44, 9 April 2022

Developing Cortex M3/M4 Applications Using Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (short VSCode) can be used to edit the source code, build the application and finally debug it.

Required Software Components

In contrast to fully integrated IDEs, setting up Visual Studio Code requires us to setup a number of software packages, which finally work together to build the complete development environment. The software packages can be split into three groups:

1. VSCode and plugins
2. ARM Build Tools (compiler etc.)
3. Debug tools

• The packages can be installed in any order
• VSCode must be installed before VSCode plugins can be installed.

1. Visual Studio Code and Plugins

Visual Studio Code

We can look at VSCode as an intelligent text editor which provides an extensive framework to add functionality through plugins. VSCode includes a project explorer, which can show the contents of one or multiple folders as a workspace. There is more information on required plugins further down in this list.

Required Plugins

C/C++

This plugin offers many features to simplify editing of C/C++ code, including Syntax highlighting, Intellisense (finding definitions of symbols), auto-completion of keywords and identifier names, and marking syntax errors while typing. For more details, please refer the following documents:

• Using C++ on Linux in VSCode
• Using GCC with MinGW
• Configure VSCode for Microsoft C++

Cortex-Debug

This plugin adds support for debugging ARM executable through a GDB Server.

• marus25.cortex-debug
• How to Use
• For a summary of all properties that are available in launch.json

CMake

CMake Language Support for Visual Studio Code.

• Get started with CMake Tools on Linux
• CMake Tools for Visual Studio Code

ARM

Syntax highlighting for ARM assembly code

Linker Script

Syntax highlighting for linker scripts

Icon	Plugin Name	Required	Code Name
	C/C++	Required	ms-vscode.cpptools
	Cortex-Debug	Required	marus25.cortex-debug
	CMake Language Support for Visual Studio Code	Optional	twxs.cmake
	ARM Assembly highlighting	Optional	dan-c-underwood.arm
	Language support for GNU linker script	Optional	Zixuan Wang

2. ARM Build Tools

GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain

GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain is the C/C++ compiler and linker along with additional tools. It is used to turn your source code into a binary executable.

CMake

CMake is a tool which turns compiler-independent project definitions into compiler-specific project definitions. CMake converts these into makefiles that can be processed by the GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain.

3. Debugger Tools

OpenOCD

OpenOCD is an open-source debugger, supporting a wide variety of JTAG hardware interfaces. For customers using a JTAG adapter other than the J-Link, this probably is the matching software. The package contains a GDB server, which connects to VSCode on one side, and to the J-Link JTAG/SWD hardware on the other side.

• OpenOCD Documentation
• OpenOCD Ubuntu Package
• OpenOCD Config Files
• OpenOCD Config File Paths
• Running OpenOCD on Linux
• Running OpenOCD on Windows
• Accessing Devices without sudo
• Configuring Windows 7 for OpenOCD

Chocolatey (Software Management For Windows)

The Windows versions of required software will be installed using Chocolately
To Setup/Install, Search, and Upgrade Packages, Please follow/refer following documents:

• Install/Setup Chocolatey on windows 10
• Search for available packages
• upgrade packages

Note: Always run Chocolatey (choco) under Windows Power Shell (as an administrator)

4. Install VSCode

Ubuntu

• Please follow this link to install Visual Studio Code Application.
• For more options, please refer to the Visual Studio Code setup page.

Windows

> choco install vscode

5. Installing Visual Studio Code Plugins

The easiest way is to install them from the command prompt inside the IDE:

code --install-extension ms-vscode.cpptools
code --install-extension marus25.cortex-debug
code --install-extension twxs.cmake
code --install-extension dan-c-underwood.arm
code --install-extension zixuanwang.linkerscript

Or we can use in the IDE the menu View > Extensions.

1. Open VSCode
2. Select View → Extensions

   This will show the Extension sidebar

3. In the search box above the Extension sidebar, type the Code name from the above table (without the angle brackets) or another reasonable search term
4. Click on the little green Install button which appears next to the found plugin.

Below is our installed extensions (menu File > Preferences > Extensions):

6. Install Build Tools

Ubuntu

GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain

• Please follow this link to install GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain
• OR, we can install using apt

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install gcc-arm-none-eabi binutils-arm-none-eabi

Make and CMake

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install make cmake

Windows

GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain

> choco install gcc-arm-embedded

Make

> choco install make

CMake

> choco install cmake

7. Install Debugging Tools

OpenOCD

Ubuntu

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install openocd

Windows

> choco install openocd

Sample Project

You can download sample project from here