Dissatisfaction With MPLAB

[whakojacko]

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

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Redneck

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.

Originally Posted by whakojacko

but not without lots of annoyances

Other than the syntax highlighting issues, what other annoyances have you found?

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by katkana

...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 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?