Eclipse, yotta, C/C++ and the BBC Micro:bit

With the help of the excellent instructions at the link below I set up Eclipse with yotta to compile C code for the BBC micro:bit under Linux: http://flames-of-code.netlify.com/blog/microbit-cpp-3/ I get the debugger window to come up, but have not yet used this feature in anger. The writer, achary, clearly knows more about Eclipse and embedded programming than I do. I got a little stuck at a couple of stages so created this page to pass on my solutions.

The offline C compiler for the BBC micro:bit is developed at Lancaster University. Installing the yotta compiler and downloading example files is explained here.

The rest of this article assumes you followed the instructions on this installation guide and have cloned the microbit-samples directory. I assume that you have Eclipse installed, either the C/C++ installation or you have installed the C/C++ development environment.

Installing yotta

Instructions for installing yotta can be found in the yotta documentation here. Note that yotta is designed for Python2.7 only. I used pip to install yotta to my user directory, using the –user flag. Then I started getting errors:

'module' object has no attribute 'X509_up_ref'

I faffed around upgrading my cryptography library as mentioned in the yotta documentation. Long story short, the recently installed ‘yotta’ and ‘yt’ commands in ~/.local/bin/yt and ~/.local/bin/yotta both referred to python 3. I probably did something sometime to cause this. To fix the error I changed ~/.local/bin/yt and ~/.local/bin/yotta from:

#!/usr/bin/python3.6

import yotta
yotta.main()

To:

#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import yotta
yotta.main()

Get yotta to work in debug mode

Using yotta with the –debug-build flag allows for easier debugging. By default, the code is compiled in an optimised mode which makes debugging harder. I need all of the help that I can get, so would like to use this flag. The command to run yotta with the –debug-build flag  is:

yotta build --debug-build

However, this will throw an error and the last line of the build will give the error:

ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

I am not sure what a ninja is doing in my system. If I could see him, I would probably already be dead.

To fix this error, the ‘-fomit-frame’ flag needs adding at two places in the file yotta_targets/mbed-gcc/CMake/Platform/mbedOS-GNU-C.cmake in your microbit-samples directory.

The two changes to mbedOS-GNU-C.cmake are:

line 21 from:

set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-g -gdwarf-3")

to:

set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-g -gdwarf-3 -fomit-frame-pointer")

line 28 from:

set(CMAKE_ASM_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-g -gdwarf-3")

to:

set(CMAKE_ASM_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-g -gdwarf-3 -fomit-frame-pointer")

Then remove the build directory in the microbit-samples directory and rebuild using:

yotta build --debug-build

If you don’t remove the old build directory directory, then the command will still fail. I know this.

Install pyOCD

We use the pyOCD tool to help debug and program the microbit. Details of this tool are on its github page.

‘pyOCD is an Open Source python 2.7 based library for programming and debugging ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers using CMSIS-DAP. Linux, OSX and Windows are supported.’

Note the ‘python 2.7’ bit. Initially I pip installed it, which defaulted to a python 3 install. The install worked, but when I came to try running pyocd, I got a  bunch of assertion errors. So I read the instructions…

To ensure that pyocd is installed using python2.7, I used:

pip2 install --pre -U --user pyocd

–pre ‘Include pre-release and development versions. By default, pip only finds stable versions.’ from https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#install-pre

-U same as –upgrade ‘Upgrade all specified packages to the newest available version.’

–user libraries go to the user directory. In linux, this removes the need for sudo to install, which is a security issue.

Plugin your microbit.

Now we fire up a gdbserver using the newly installed pyocd. What is a gdbserver? This wikipedia page explains that ‘gdbserver is a computer program that makes it possible to remotely debug other programs.’

sudo ~/.local/bin/pyocd-gdbserver -t nrf51 -bh -r

-t target (nrf51 is the chipset used on the microbit). -bh replace software breakpoints with hardware breakpoints. -r halt the target when reset.

I get this output:

INFO:root:DAP SWD MODE initialised
INFO:root:ROM table #0 @ 0xf0000000 cidr=b105100d pidr=2007c4001
INFO:root:[0]<e00ff000: cidr=b105100d, pidr=4000bb471, class=1>
INFO:root:ROM table #1 @ 0xe00ff000 cidr=b105100d pidr=4000bb471
INFO:root:[0]<e000e000:SCS-M0+ cidr=b105e00d, pidr=4000bb008, class=14>
INFO:root:[1]<e0001000:DWT-M0+ cidr=b105e00d, pidr=4000bb00a, class=14>
INFO:root:[2]<e0002000:BPU cidr=b105e00d, pidr=4000bb00b, class=14>
INFO:root:[1]<f0002000: cidr=b105900d, pidr=4000bb9a3, class=9, devtype=13, devid=0>
INFO:root:CPU core is Cortex-M0
INFO:root:4 hardware breakpoints, 0 literal comparators
INFO:root:2 hardware watchpoints
INFO:root:Telnet: server started on port 4444
INFO:root:GDB server started at port:3333

There is a way to set up a file in udev to remove the need to use sudo to run pyocd. Please see this link on how to do this.

The guide I read recommended using the –persist flag with the pyocd-gdbserver command. I found my serial port communication with the micro:bit stopped working. Instead of there being a single serial port connection to the micro:bit, there were several. I suspect the –persist flag kept ‘zombie’ connections alive, causing my code to connect to a dead connection that only existed in the OS’ imagination.

--persist # keep GDB server running even after remote has detached.

As awac explains, this shows that we have access to 4 hardware breakpoints. The server is started at port 3333. This port will be entered into the Eclipse debugger setup, which is explained below.

Set up Eclipse

http://flames-of-code.netlify.com/blog/microbit-cpp-3/ covers setting up a C/C++ Eclipse project with the microbit-samples code downloaded from the Lancaster University github. I am using Eclipse Oxygen at the time of writing this post.

A new project is set up by using File, New, Makefile Project with Existing Code.

Alter the default build command from ‘make’ to ‘yotta build –debug-build’. Get to this by right clicking on the microbit-samples project and selecting ‘Properties’.

dynamic exception specifications are deprecated in C++11 [-Wdeprecated]

Configuring the Eclipse C/C++ debugger for use with yotta

The pyOCD site mentions that the plugin ‘Eclipse Embedded Systems Register View’ should be installed. This took me a little while to figure out how to install, so I created a separate post on how to do this here. This plugin is not yet of use for the microbit. I hope to get CMSIS-SVD configuration files from Nordic for the microbit’s microcontroller to be able to make use of the plugin.

I came a little unstuck when setting up the debug session as I could not find the ‘GDB Hardware Debugging’ option when editing my debug configuration. To get that option we need to install the GNU MCU Eclipse plugin from the Eclipse Marketplace. Go to the Help menu and click on ‘Eclipse Marketplace’. Put ‘gnu mcu’ as the search term to find the plugin. This plugin adds the ‘GDB Hardware Debugging’ option to your run configurations which we use when setting up Eclipse.

This allows me set up for the GDB debugger as shown in the screen shots below. Go to Run, Debug configurations. microbit-samples/build/bbc-microbit-classic-gcc/source/microbit-samples.

The Debugger tab specifies the path to the GDB :

/usr/bin/arm-none-eabi-gdb

Enter port ‘3333’, which we noted earlier when starting the gdb server.

In the Startup tab, click on ‘Load image’ and ‘Use File’. Enter

${workspace_loc:/microbit-samples/build/bbc-microbit-classic-gcc/source/microbit-samples-combined.hex}

Initially I had some errors:

Reset command not defined for device 'Generic TCP/IP'

Looking at this Stackoverflow question, I fixed this by also unchecking Reset & Delay and Halt options in the debugger configuration:

Run the command

yt clean

from the command line in your microbit-samples directory to clean out the last build. Then ‘control-b’ in Eclipse to create a fresh build. I feel I should be able to click on the little bug icon on the menu bar to get to the debugger, but this gives me a ’launch failed. Binary not found.’ window. So I right click on the project and select ‘Debug As’,‘Debug Configurations’, ‘microbit-samples Default’ then click on the ‘Debug’ button on the bottom right. I get offered the chance to go to the debug screen, which is a result.