VisualStudio-PropGCC

Visual Studio 2010 is our preferred environment for Windows C++ development. Here we take a look at using VS 2010 as our IDE for Propeller C/C++ development

This is an unsupported use of Visual Studio and it's not perfect...

Download this example solution with several of the demos as projects inside. (or see how I did it by reading further down)

Inside VS, push the green play button ("Start Debugging") to compile load the Propeller. You can also just "Build" to check for errors first.

This solution comprises several projects. Select the active project from the "Solution Explorer" by right-clicking on it and picking "Set as StartUp Project".

These project all have a build.bat file that is rigged to run in lmm or cmm mode. They should all work in either mode. You can edit the build.bat file to try other modes.

This is a work in progress, but here is how we build and run:

Install PropGCC

Create a "Makefile Project" in Visual Studio

We are not actually going to use makefiles, but we pretend we are...

Using the Wizard:

Set "Build command line" to "build.bat"

Add "c:\propgcc\propeller-elf\include" to "Include Search Path"

Add your source .c or .cpp files to the project.

Create a new file called build.bat that will use the command line tools and add it to the project.

Edit build .bat and add lines like this that execute the command line tools to build the project:

	del a.out propeller-elf-gcc.exe -o a.out -Os -mcmm -I . -fno-exceptions -mp2 Hello_P2.c propeller-elf-objdump -h a.out
	We do the "del a.out" to make sure we are compiling and running a fresh version
	propeller-elf-gcc does the compiling to create the a.out file
	the

Edit the Project-->Properties

Under NMake:

set "Build Command Line" to "build" (this will execute build.bat when we select "build" from the menu) (if not done by wizard)

set "Output" to "c:\propgcc\bin\propeller-load.exe" (this will now run when we push the play button in debug mode)

Add "c:\propgcc\propeller-elf\include" to "Include Search Path" (if not done by wizard)

Under Debugging:

set "Command Arguments" to those you need for propeller-load, for example:

-I C:/propgcc/propeller-load/ -b DE2-115 a.out -r -t

You will need to change the settings on the above line to match your board and com port

Now, you should be able to use the "build" and "Start Debugging" commands!

It may complain about not having debugging info, but just tell it not to bother you again about that.

Intellisense: Getting this to work is the hard part...

VS will put red squigglies under errors and things it doesn't understand. Getting it to understand Prop GCC code is tough...

The step above where we added the propeller-elf\include to NMake helps a lot.

Need to figure out how to make it recognize things like "waitcnt"

Visual Studio 2010 is our preferred environment for Windows C++ development. Here we take a look at using VS 2010 as our IDE for Propeller C/C++ development

This is an unsupported use of Visual Studio and it's not perfect...

Download this example solution with several of the demos as projects inside. (or see how I did it by reading further down)

Inside VS, push the green play button ("Start Debugging") to compile load the Propeller. You can also just "Build" to check for errors first.

This solution comprises several projects. Select the active project from the "Solution Explorer" by right-clicking on it and picking "Set as StartUp Project".

These project all have a build.bat file that is rigged to run in lmm or cmm mode. They should all work in either mode. You can edit the build.bat file to try other modes.

This is a work in progress, but here is how we build and run:

Install PropGCC

Create a "Makefile Project" in Visual Studio

We are not actually going to use makefiles, but we pretend we are...

Using the Wizard:

Set "Build command line" to "build.bat"

Add "c:\propgcc\propeller-elf\include" to "Include Search Path"

Add your source .c or .cpp files to the project.

Create a new file called build.bat that will use the command line tools and add it to the project.

Edit build .bat and add lines like this that execute the command line tools to build the project:

del a.out

propeller-elf-gcc.exe -o a.out -Os -mcmm -I . -fno-exceptions -mp2 Hello_P2.c

propeller-elf-objdump -h a.out

We do the "del a.out" to make sure we are compiling and running a fresh version

propeller-elf-gcc does the compiling to create the a.out file

the

Edit the Project-->Properties

Under NMake:

set "Build Command Line" to "build" (this will execute build.bat when we select "build" from the menu) (if not done by wizard)

set "Output" to "c:\propgcc\bin\propeller-load.exe" (this will now run when we push the play button in debug mode)

Add "c:\propgcc\propeller-elf\include" to "Include Search Path" (if not done by wizard)

Under Debugging:

set "Command Arguments" to those you need for propeller-load, for example:

-I C:/propgcc/propeller-load/ -b DE2-115 a.out -r -t

You will need to change the settings on the above line to match your board and com port

Now, you should be able to use the "build" and "Start Debugging" commands!

It may complain about not having debugging info, but just tell it not to bother you again about that.

Intellisense: Getting this to work is the hard part...

VS will put red squigglies under errors and things it doesn't understand. Getting it to understand Prop GCC code is tough...

The step above where we added the propeller-elf\include to NMake helps a lot.

Need to figure out how to make it recognize things like "waitcnt"