There are two big features of Eclipse I failed to mention:
- Autocompletion
- Content indexing
Autocompletion means if you start typing a function, eclipse will show a list of possible functions, and then show you its arguments when you select one.
Content indexing means that if you select a function or a variable and hit F3, Eclipse will show you where it is declared. Ctrl+F3 shows you where it is defined (the actual code).
What is in the SourceForge downloads area is just the additions I made to Eclipse and the CDT in my own distribution on my website. I did not put the full Eclipse package in SF because of its size.
The update site of the whole project is
http://firstclipse.sourceforge.net/update/. Note that this includes everything, so you'll get some odd additions to Eclipse with no real functionality.
The error parser I believe is fine, but I have had problems compiling it. It seems that if you compile the plugins in the Java 5.0 mode, it won't find some classes. I can make a release of it, and (if people verify that it's ok) add it to the extract-and-go package.
The addition of the loader will mean that we can add functionality to it. Storing and retrieving EEPROM settings. Reading hex files. Whatever. We can also add virtual serial ports; in addition to using hardware, you could use, eg, a "serial server" instead. (esp useful if your development system has no serial ports. This is not for USB-Serial adapters.) Note that this is still under development, and I would not recommend using it until we work out the details.
Here's my list of priorities (feel free to critique as fit):
- Toolchain
- Error parser
- mcc18/wine wrappers
- loader
- binary parser
- syntax highlighting
Also, I'm considering adding these additions:
Both of these would use the same serial library used by the loader code.
The serial called something I'm/we're developing called JSerial. I looked at the "standard" Java library (JavaComm), and I found that it was a pain to gather and install, there was no source available, and the latest version had no Win32 support. (Not even getting into licensing problems.) The current version is in SVN. (Or will be in a few minutes.)
Thank you for the offer to handle NSIS, but Eclipse requires no installation. You extract it and run it. And I know NSIS already. (If people would like an installation program, we can add that.)