Dissatisfaction With MPLAB

[fowlerm]

How many of you are not happy with the MPLAB IDE? What kinds of things would you change about MPLAB?

[jdhawg]

That's a tought question, with no real good answer. I've used several IDE's over the years, and they all have little things I'd change. Even so, I like the way that MPLAB works, and can't really think of anything major I'd like to see done differently. When I hit the 'Build' button, it builds. What more can I ask for?

[Mike Betts]

As I posted before, MPLAB is very well designed and easy to use for it's class.

Before you criticize, compare it to other embedded controller development systems. As an example, take the PBASIC interface for the Basic Stamp product line... Do you want to go back to that?

Remember, you can't compare an embedded development system which runs on a PC (non-native target) with a native target development system (you are developing on the same platform as your software will run). They are completely different animals...

[Richard Wallace]

MPLAB-IDE is good choice for FIRST code development, because it is widely used in the real world and relatively inexpensive. Last summer I was able to hire a former FIRST student as an engineering intern. His experience with robot design and with embedded programming in the MPLAB environment enabled a really cool internship project. He built a Segway-like device using my company's brushless motors -- designed and built from scratch in six weeks. Sound familiar? The device has been quite useful for demonstrating our brushless motors' performance.

[jdhawg]

Has anyone else noticed that the only people posting comments are saying positive things about MPLAB? Come on, people. If you are going to vote that you are dissatisfied with MPLAB, tell us why!

[Dave Flowerday]

Has anyone else noticed that the only people posting comments are saying positive things about MPLAB? Come on, people. If you are going to vote that you are dissatisfied with MPLAB, tell us why!
If you don't like the MPLAB IDE, then why not use something else? The compiler and related tools can all run from the command line, and thus I imagine they could be integrated with a number of existing IDEs that are available.

Personally, I hate IDEs altogether. All of Wildstang's software people use a Cygwin shell (choose your favorite: ksh, bash, tcsh, etc), make, and vim ;)

[DanC]

I (and the other programmers on my team) got fed up with the MPLAB IDE last year. We just ran into too many annoyances with it, like how it opened files from the wrong directory when we copied, say, the v2.5 directory and made a v2.6 one (though we've since switched to using subversion, which is needless to say a much better versioning system ;)), all of the files it generated in the code directory were annoying to sift through, and we often got mysterious "Catastrophic Errors". We find it much easier now to use a text editor with syntax highlighting, a .bat script to compile the program, a few utilities (can't live without grep), and TortoiseSVN.

So, yes, I would say I'm dissatisfied with MPLAB... Though that's in no way saying it's bad, just that I personally don't like using it.

[JoeXIII'007]

I like MPLAB. Very easy to use if you know what you are doing. Plus, it builds programs OK, projects OK, generally OK. Not much else I can say than that.

[Goldeye]

In terms of a text editor, MPLAB really annoys me in some cases. Its indenting seems a bit strange, it often draws the code the wrong color (can get very confusing when a block of code tells you its a comment.) The problems it has with projects pointing to the wrong file sometimes is also quite annoying. I don't really see a reason not to use an alternate editor along with a make or bat setup.

[Redneck]

Well, I admit that MPLab has some good points. It's easy to use, and (mostly) works well. However, I voted dissatisfied. It's not because of any major problems, just lots of minor annoyances. The random changing text colors in the code just bug the hell outta me and throw me off. ("Oh, wait, you mean that code there ISN'T commented out? Oops...") The random occurences of "Catastrophic Failure", while amusing, are NOT welcome at 3 am after 12 solid hours of coding. Even though it's not at all a big deal, "pathname exceeds 64 character limit" bugged me. And of course, projects pointing to the wrong file is just so much fun as it sends me and my fellow programmers searching through the code for non-existant errors.

[Ferazel2001]

I agree with Jamie2 on many things, this... not being one of them. He actually admitted there were some good things about MPLab. I have no regrets when I formatted MPLab off RP2, (Zeroing all data, of course... (foul best)) to make space for Knoppix 3.8. First thing I did was reinstall IFILoader with Wine, and aside from some minor font issues it works fine. My next task is to get Eclipse to compile the code on my one and only iBook (2nd gen, Firewire 400, 366 mhz, _100 GB HD_, 5 hr battery (Modded, of course... not as much as it will be by the end of this summer... *evil grin*)) and once thats done... I will start an angry letter to IFI Robotics getting them to port the loader to the Mac. I have a USB to nine pin, whats the hold up?

Anyway... I think its great that people who have more imagination then I do can reinvent the wheel... im still stuck on a WiFi accessable Robot First Aid Station (Team 599)

(If you cant tell, I was distracted by my new PC catching fire, (Blasted thing... one of the reasons I like my mac so much) I wanted to get a lot more ranting against MPLab in... sorry guys. If someone wants to get a IRC chat going about this we can post the results, I just prefer IRC to forums because you are informed instantly when someone says something.)

-Devon (Macboy)
irc.freenode.net #macosx , #sfvlug - devonst17

[BrianBSL]

Remember that MPLAB was originally designed as, and is still primarily used as, an assembly IDE. The C18 compiler only works with 17 and 18 series PIC's, which is not the majority of Microchip's sales (the 12C and 16F's are extremely popular due to their low price and abundance of features). The C compiler is simply an add-in, and the IDE itself is free (the C compiler is what costs money if we had to pay for it).

[Stephen Kowski]

eh for some reason i think most of these issues will be reconciled by/before next year.....

[jgannon]

I'm not entirely fond of the random syntax highlighting (as mentioned in several posts above), but until they figure out how to port KWrite to Win32 (I know it'll never happen, but a nerd can dream), there's nothing too frustrating about MPLAB that would drive me to complain, or to go in search of another IDE.

[katkana]

I'll be the first one to admit I'm a novice programmer, so my problems with MPLAB may sound like 'duh, just do this and this to arrive there and get those files', but I tried using some general C-tutorials to learn more about the language, and whenever I would go to write some program with say, #include <stdio.h>, that file wouldn't be found and I would find myself unable to build said program.

Note: any and all help/smack upside the head for such blatant stupidity in regards to the above problem would be very much appreciated! :D

~kat

[whakojacko]

i have found MPLAB ok. It achieves its desired function (at least for FIRST programming), but not without lots of annoyances

[jgannon]

Even though it's not at all a big deal, "pathname exceeds 64 character limit" bugged me.
That's a function of the C18 compiler, not MPLAB.
but not without lots of annoyances
Other than the syntax highlighting issues, what other annoyances have you found?

[Mike Betts]

...whenever I would go to write some program with say, #include <stdio.h>, that file wouldn't be found and I would find myself unable to build said program...

Kat,

I would suggest you uninstall MPLAB and the C18 compiler and reinstall. Everything I am about to post should resolve itself with a proper install.

MPLAB needs to know what stdio.h file you wish to use. I have five on my laptop...

From MPLAB, open "Project" then "build options" then project and see where you have told MPLAB to look for (in this case, "include") files. On my computer, that location is "c:\mcc18h\". This was the default when I installed the new C18 compiler this year.

Note that importing a project from another computer may cause a conflict. As an example, one of the computers at our school is set up differently from mine. When I zip and move those files to my laptop and then try and build the project, it cannot find the include files because they are in a different location on the school computer. Likewise, copying my files to the school computer causes a similar problem.

Note that every development system ever made has a similar potential problem if you have more than one development environment on your development system.

If MPLAB was to use the stdio.h file for, say, Matlab R12 (on my computer located at C:\matlabR12\sys\lcc\include), the results would be devastating. The same goes for Visual Studio, et cetera.

Note that your MPLAB may have gotten corrupted if you did not follow the instructions for the sequence of installation.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[prograid]

MP LAB does its job fine, but it could be a lot better, compared with many other IDEs its not that great. For example, in addition to its weird syntax highlighting, there are many useful features it lacks, such as not having errors shown within the files. If any of you have worked with IDEs such as Eclipse, you know what I'm talking about. It also lacks an outline view that just shows you function names, return types, arguments, defined symbols, etc. These are all pretty useful features that would really help. I've actually written a plug-in that allows you to use eclipse to develop your code for FRC. There are basic instructions in the using eclipse (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=37736) thread. I'll also be posting a white paper with more detailed instructions later.

[dasRatsel]

granted its easy to use and relatively powerful -- mplab definately fails in the finess department -- the way it formats text (auto-indentation) is awful at best... and the syntax colors are buggy as all hell (how can bugs that big that everybody notices remain unfixed) -- not to mention the layout has caused the loss of hair folicles many times -- like -- sometimes just where the hell does the output window go? -- and do i really need the file browser to take up the whole window sometimes -- its a useful program -- but it falls short in the particulars -- thats why i use eclipse == when i start a function -- i actuall get an indent when i hit enter

i'd love to use MP lab == its easier to teach others (barely technologicly able but want to program the robot) == but will they ever fix the little things?