XDE Wish List

Technical questions regarding the XTC tools and programming with XMOS.
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Andy
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XDE Wish List

Post by Andy »

I've been using the XDE for quite a while now and thought it might be useful to maintain a wish list of ideas for features that would improve usability of the development tools. High demand for certain suggestions might prompt XMOS to focus on them for a future build.

These suggestions would make my life easier:
  • Easier method to view assembly generated by compiler
    At the moment, setting/unsetting the -S flag in the compiler menu is too slow and annoying. Ideally a secondary menu off the "Build" (hammer) icon would allow you to either output assembly only or both assembly and executable. The assembly output should be *.s files rather than *.o as currently generated. Another idea would be to have a flag in the file's right click menu to enable/disable assembly output on a per-file basis.
    .
  • Better resource report (constraint check) after compile
    The --show-report mapper option is disabled by default and the output for "stack available" is not particularly helpful (it's in hex - (K)bytes would be more readable). A percentage listing of how much memory is data/code for each core would be very useful. Even more useful would be an output of how much you are over the limit if your program is too big (I can never quite tell if it is doing this at the minute). A more advanced report could perhaps show the size of data structures.


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BrianMiller
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Post by BrianMiller »

Andy wrote:
  • Easier method to view assembly generated by compiler
    At the moment, setting/unsetting the -S flag in the compiler menu is too slow and annoying. Ideally a secondary menu off the "Build" (hammer) icon would allow you to either output assembly only or both assembly and executable. The assembly output should be *.s files rather than *.o as currently generated. Another idea would be to have a flag in the file's right click menu to enable/disable assembly output on a per-file basis.
    .
I second this. Absolutely. Quick and easy access to assembly listings is vital for a lot of things in the edit/compile/test cycle.
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andrew
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Post by andrew »

Well, you'll both be pleased to know that the next release has a disassembly viewer and we are currently working on a resource viewer which will be included too.
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BrianMiller
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Post by BrianMiller »

andrew wrote:Well, you'll both be pleased to know that the next release has a disassembly viewer and we are currently working on a resource viewer which will be included too.
That's excellent news and will be a great boost to productivity.
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Jerry
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Post by Jerry »

andrew wrote:Well, you'll both be pleased to know that the next release has a disassembly viewer and we are currently working on a resource viewer which will be included too.
When will the next release be available?
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Andy
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Post by Andy »

A suggestion for the waveform viewer this time.

I noticed that if you enable pad tracing you are presented with a big scary list of pads with no indication how they are connected to the ports. Some way of figuring this out without looking up the documentation would be useful.
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andrew
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Post by andrew »

Good news again. This feature had already been added to the next release and will be a part of our binary view.
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Andy
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Post by Andy »

andrew wrote:Good news again. This feature had already been added to the next release and will be a part of our binary view.
Always one step ahead! :D
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

Sorry to bring this up again, but is there going to be a resolution to the XDE problems on Ubuntu?

I understand that there is a fix, but one of the wonderful things about Ubuntu is how easy it is to maintain. I know I can easily apply the fix, but I would prefer not to mess with anything, and I'd prefer the tools to just work out of the box.

Again, I understand it might not be high on the agenda, there are commercial reasons for supporting a single distribution etc.

Yes or no is fine! :-) No means I might set up a dedicated machine for development work. Yes means I don't have to. It's the grey area in the middle that's a pain in the ass.
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andrew
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Post by andrew »

Again this is also fixed in the next release. It was a Eclipse bug with ubuntu and Eclipse 3.4 which the XDE was based on. Fortunately, we have upgraded to the latest Eclipse and this solves the problem. Hope that helps.