Build Firmware With Eclipse

Problem

You want to use the free and open source Eclipse IDE to build firmware for the Make Controller. The latest version of Eclipse at the time of this writing is Galileo (3.5.x) - you may find that you need to slightly adjust the instructions for later versions.

Solution

Overview

The steps to set up a development environment with Eclipse are:

1. Install the GnuArm tools that you need to compile firmware on your platform.
   • On OS X, you need the Developer Tools from Apple, and need to download and run the GnuArm installer from the Downloads section.
   • On Windows, check this how-to.
   • On Linux, follow the link from the Downloads section.  Once you've unpacked it, be sure to add the arm/bin directory within to your system PATH - adding a link from /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin can work well.
2. Download the latest version of Eclipse. 
   
3. Download the Make Controller source code from the Downloads section or pull the latest from Google Code.
   
4. Create and configure your project.

Download Eclipse

Eclipse was originally a tool for Java, but now supports building projects in many different languages.  In order to build code for the Make Controller, we'll need to grab appropriate version of Eclipse to build projects in C, and a GNU toolchain to build executables for the Make Controller.

At the Eclipse downloads page, select Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers and select a mirror near you to being your download.

 

Download the Make Controller Source Code

The easiest place to start is usually by building Heavy (the default firmware on the Make Controller) and starting to make modifications to create your own project.  To do this, either grab the latest firmware source download from the Downloads section or check out the very latest code via Subversion (brief overview in the Downloads section).

Create and Configure Your Project

First, Eclipse will ask you which workspace you want to open - it doesn't matter much so just put whatever you like.

Then we need to create a new Eclipse project:

• Click File -> New -> C Project
• In the list on the left, open the Makefile Project group and select Empty Project
  
• For Project name, choose whatever you like (I've chosen hello) and then, deselect Use default location, click Browse, and select the projects directory within the Make Controller source code you downloaded. If Eclipse does not automatically add the name of your project onto the end of the Location field, make sure you do that yourself.
• Leave Other Toolchain selected
  
• Click Finish and Eclipse will create the empty directory hello within the projects folder.
• Copy over a few files from the heavy project folder into your hello folder: make.c, config.h, Makefile and the output folder.

Discussion

Check the Programming tutorial for more details on writing code for the Make Controller.