Quick Tutorial
 

Requirements

1. Microcross Visual X-Tools with ARM Toolsuite on Windows host .
2. ARM based target board or use the built-in simulator.

Procedures

1. Click on 'Project | New'. Select 'GNU arm-elf C/C++ Wizard' and create a new workspace.
Select the correct target toolchain (in this case, arm-elf) and click OK.

2. The following dialog appears. Select the C executable project as shown.

3. The application type dialog appears. Select 'An empty project'.

4. A choice of 'Build Systems' dialog appear. Slect the 'Build with an auto-generated, auto-maintained
makefile'. Note: If you want a build environment with dependency checking (SlickEdit Vsbuild), then select
'Build without makefile (dependencies automatically checked)'.

5. Select 'Finish' and the New Project Information will show a summary of the project created.

6. Click OK, and then click on the Files tab. Navigate to the <drive>\Cygwin\home\test directory and select
the 'pascal.c'source file. Click on Add button to add this file to the project files. Click OK to finish setting
up the project.

7. Double click on the source file 'pascial.c' to open the source file. The developer can edit or view the source
content. Below is a screenshot of the Visual X-Tools IDE.

8. Click on 'Build | Compile' from the menu or the mini toolbar icon.  Below is a description of the mini
toolbar and its icons.

9. The screenshot below shows the compiled result.

10. Click on 'Build' or on 'Build Project' icon on the mini toolbar. The screenshot Below shows the make
results.

11. This following instructions describes how to use command line GDB for a simulator target.Click on
'Build | Debug with GDB' from the menu or click on the mini toolbar bug symbol. Type 'target sim' to select
the simulator, and then type 'load' to load the program. Then type 'run'. To exit, type 'quit' and the debugger
session will end. 

12. Click on 'Build | Debug with Visual GDB' in the menu or mini toolbar. To select a breakpoint, move a
mouse over the left edge of the window and click on a line to set the breakpoint. Then select the Left Most icon
(picture of a running person) on the toolbar near the menu. When prompted, select 'Target | Simulator' on the
drop down select box. After debugging completes, you can click on 'File | Exit' to exit Visual GDB.

Note that GDB supports Hardware assisted debug interfaces such as EPI MAJIC JTAG for ARM/XScale/MIPS,
and Nohau for ARM core. In this case, select ARM Remote/Serial or ARM Remote/Ethernet and the JTAG probe
must support GDB backend (such as EPI MAJIC or EPI JEENI). Using Hardware JTAG Debug offers you
non-intrusive debugging using onchip debug hardware of the ARM Core (and some cores also support hardware
trace or onchip Hardware trace), Hardware Breakpoint, debug code in Flash and debug Kernel as well.

13. You can open a memory window, watch window, local variable window, and current register window. Below is a screenshot.

14. Click on 'Build | GNU X-Tools Options'. Picture below shows the dialog and the compiler settings. Click on
'Verbose output' to turn it on and show all of the compiler output when building.

15. On the 'Misc' tab, expand the 'machine' folder.  You can set the various arm-elf architecture code generation
specific options here. See screen below.

16. Click on the 'Code Generation' tab. You can set optimization, debug symbols, and other options.

17. Click on 'Linker' tab. You can set linker options here.

18. Click on the 'Run/Debug' tab. Select 'arm-elf-gdb' for the debugging.

This ends our short tour of the Visual-X Tools.