Setting up Eclipse for ARMS Cortex development work

The reason I am doing this page is because I find development work using SEGGER IDE is really painful. It is really not a fun IDE to work with. Maybe in future, it will be better. But for now, I have a project to do, and I cannot spending time on a lousy development environment, knowing how fast it would be using a good IDE platform.

It is fortunate enough that a kind soul had developed a “GNU ARM Eclipse plugin” for development of ARMS firmware, currently supprted and maintain by Liviu Ionescu. While SEGGER does not support this plugin, it is recommended by them for developer who refer to use a better development environment for their programming.
https://www.segger.com/products/debug-probes/j-link/technology/ides/eclipse/

The only disadvantage is that the developer would not be able to use the SEGGER debugging function. Being a developer, I seldom find the need to use a debugger, nor I understand how important a hardware debugger is. I don’t find it very useful so far, and managed to turn out many projects without using it. Perhaps there is a better purpose of using a debugger that I did not understand.

This is my attempt to setup Eclipse IDE for ARM Cortex firmware development work. I hope this works as it can increase my productivity tremendously. I really have a lot of blocks using SEGGER IDE, after working with many better other IDE products.

Setting Up Eclipse IDE for ARM Cortex Microcontroller development work.

reference: https://gnu-mcu-eclipse.github.io/

  1. Download and install the Eclipse IDE. (for C/C++ Developers)
  2. Open the Eclipse program, go to the menu Help -> Eclipse Marketplace…
  3. Search for “GNU MCU Eclipse” plugin, or go to this page
    https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/gnu-arm-eclipse
    to drag the install button onto the Eclipse Marketplace dialog box.
    Click the <Confirm> button to install the plugin.
  4. Install “xPack GNU Arm Embedded GCC” program.
    https://gnu-mcu-eclipse.github.io/toolchain/arm/install/
  5. Install the SEGGER J-Link
    https://gnu-mcu-eclipse.github.io/debug/jlink/install/