Please, add a basic debugger to IDE

[q2dg]

If Zero board has the ability of being debugged, and the low-level tools (openocd, gdb) already exist and are shipped within the IDE, it's a pity that IDE doesn't offer a basic GUI interface to them. Following these steps (http://starter-kit.nettigo.eu/2015/debug-sketch-on-arduino-zero-pro-with-gdb-and-openocd ...caution, he talks about "the other" board, but I suppose it's the same) is a real pain...so Zero's user experience would improve a lot with a GUI. I know it's a big change...but at least I would like to know if it is the roadmap.
Thanks.

[maimaris]

All arduinos need a debugger

[PaulStoffregen]

Easily said, not as easily done...

[q2dg]

Well, I'm focused in Zero because its product page (https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardZero) says: "One of its most important features is Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware, significantly increasing the ease-of-use for software debugging" If you say this and IDE doesn't offer the hability of using this, it's better not to say it, isn't? But more important...the tools are already available and functional!! I only ask for a GUI integration (maybe a toolbar only visible if Zero is selected from Boards menu).

[PaulStoffregen]

I only ask for a GUI integration...

Yup, much more easily said than done!

[NicoHood]

At that point I am also wondering why there is nothing happening on the new boards. They are just there, working more or less. The support even by Arduino.cc is very little so I am not wondering why noone uses those other boards or only complain about missing features. It looks like that Arduino is missing some man power. And the truck factor seems very high to me.

But sure I am aware that this is a huge feature that needs to be implemented. Just wondering from who?

[PaulStoffregen]

Eventually, I will probably be the guy who implements this.....

But don't let that slow or discourage you. If you want it, this is open source, so you can do it. Only a small matter of programming is required!

[NicoHood]

Me? Nah I have other projects :D The USB core needs some more patches, you should probably know best ;)

[PaulStoffregen]

Yeah, my own USB stack has a long list of features still to be implemented....

[NicoHood]

I was thinking of adding LUFA somehow to the core. This would be the best and most professional core I think. I am very happy about the pluggable core, but it adds a lot of overhead. Why dont we work together?

[NicoHood]

Oh I love writing offtopic sometime.

Paul, did you know that you can extend your keyboard API with even more consumer keys? Instead of only supporting 8 fixed keys you can support the first 255 keys like that:

    /* Reserved byte, used for consumer reports, only works with linux */
    0x05, 0x0C,                      /*   Usage Page (Consumer) */
    0x95, 0x01,                      /*   REPORT_COUNT (1) */
    0x75, 0x08,                      /*   REPORT_SIZE (8) */
    0x15, 0x00,                      /*   LOGICAL_MINIMUM (0) */
    0x26, 0xFF, 0x00,                /*   LOGICAL_MAXIMUM (255) */
    0x19, 0x00,                      /*   USAGE_MINIMUM (0) */
    0x29, 0xFF,                      /*   USAGE_MAXIMUM (255) */
    0x81, 0x00,                      /*   INPUT (Data,Ary,Abs) */

However I did not find out how to add an offset. But since I also want to use the sleep (0x32) this isnt that big problem. And the conumer API still exists though. Linux gives us enough options there.

Also your RAWHID test program might need an update. The libusb hidapi works good for me and detects the devices better but it cannot read the USAGE ID it seems, I might be wrong. However I am trying to patch hyperion to visualize leds via rawhid which is quite difficult due to the buffer limits etc.

[PaulStoffregen]

Yes, I'm aware of the other consumer keys. Believe me, that is one of many hundreds of (lower priority) features on my TODO list.

LUFA is very tightly tied to AVR architecture. It's also a tremendously complex coding style that's pretty much the opposite of how I prefer to do things. At this point, I'm leaving all my AVR code as-is and only focusing on adding new features to the ARM code base. So I really don't have any desire to work with LUFA.

Additional PC-side RAWHID examples are an area where I'm looking to accept contributions, but I'm not personally planning to spend more dev time on programming the PC. If you do anything there, please let me know and I'll make a link.

[q2dg]

Very interesting...but returning to original question, I would like to know if you consider adding some buttons on the IDE toolbar which conveniently call to openocd and gdb is a fool idea.

[PaulStoffregen]

Go forth to add those buttons and try to make them work. Then you can tell us whether it was foolish!

[PaoloP74]

--> https://github.com/waldschip/ZeroGDB
But work only on Arduino.org's IDE.

[NicoHood]

Wow. People are developing on top of the .org IDE? Impressive and risky.