NXP’s Eclipse-based MCUXpresso IDE is the easiest way to make full use of the hardware debugging features of modern NXP micro controllers such as the i.MX RT1060 found on the NXP i.MX RT1060 Evaluation Kit (MIMXRT1060-EVK), which I use for Teensy 4 development.

For projects that are fully under your control, such as imported SDK examples, or anything you created within Eclipse, you wouldn’t necessarily need Compilation Database support.

When working with projects of type Makefile Project with Existing Code, however, Eclipse doesn’t know about preprocessor definition flags and include directories, unless you would manually duplicate them. In large and fast-changing projects, this is not an option.

The lack of compiler configuration knowledge (defines and include directories) breaks various C/C++ tooling features, such as Macro Expansion or the Open Declaration feature, both of which are an essential tool in my toolbelt, and particularly useful in large code bases such as micro controller projects with various SDKs etc.

In some configurations, Eclipse might be able to parse GCC build output, but when I was working with the QMK keyboard firmware, I couldn’t get the QMK makefiles to print commands that Eclipse would understand, not even with VERBOSE=true.

Luckily, there is a solution! Eclipse CDT 9.10 introduced Compilation Database support in 2019. MCUXpresso v11.3.0 ships with CDT 9.11.1.202006011430, meaning it does contain Compilation Database support.

In case you want to check which version your installed IDE has, open Help → About MCUXpresso IDE, click Installation Details, open the Features tab, then locate the Eclipse CDT, C/C++ Development Platform line.

For comparison, Eclipse IDE 2021-03 contains 10.2.0.202103011047, if you want to verify that the issues I reference below are indeed fixed.

Bug: command vs. arguments

Before we can enable Compilation Database support, we need to ensure we have a compatible compile_commands.json database file. Eclipse CDT’s Compilation Database support before version CDT 10 suffered from Bug 563006: it only understood the command JSON property, not the arguments property.

Depending on your build system, this isn’t a problem. For example, Meson/ninja’s compile_commands.json uses command and will work fine.

But, when using Make with Bear, you will end up with arguments by default.

Bear 3.0 allows generating a compile_commands.json Compilation Database with command, but requires multiple commands and config files, which is a bit inconvenient with Eclipse.

So, let’s put the extra commands into a commandbear.sh script:

#!/bin/sh

set -eux

intercept --output commands.json -- "$@"
citnames \
  --input commands.json \
  --output compile_commands.json \
  --config config.json

The "command_as_array": false option goes into config.json:

{
  "compilation": {
  },
  "output": {
    "content": {
      "include_only_existing_source": true
    },
    "format": {
      "command_as_array": false,
      "drop_output_field": false
    }
  }
}

Don’t forget to make the script executable:

chmod +x commandbear.sh

Then configure Eclipse to use the commandbear.sh script to build:

1. Open Project Properties by right-clicking your project in the Project Explorer panel.
2. Select C/C++ Build and open the Builder Settings tab
3. In the Builder group, set the Build command text field to: ${workspace_loc:/qmk_firmware}/commandbear.sh make -j16

Verify your build is working by selecting Project → Clean… and triggering a build.

Enabling Compilation Database support

1. Open Project Properties by right-clicking your project in the Project Explorer panel.
2. Expand C/C++ General, select Preprocessor Include Paths, Macros etc. and open the Providers tab.
3. Untick everything but:
   • MCU GCC Built-in Compiler Parser
   • MCU GCC Build Output Parser
   • Compilation Database Parser
4. Select Compilation Database Parser, click Apply to make the Compilation Database text field editable.
5. Put a full path to your compile_commands.json file into the text field, e.g. /home/michael/kinx/workspace/qmk_firmware/compile_commands.json. Note that variables will not be expanded! Support for using variables was added later in Bug 559186.
6. Select MCU GCC Build Output Parser as Build parser.
7. Tick the Exclude files not in the Compilation Database checkbox.
8. Click Apply and Close.

You will know Compilation Database support works when its progress view shows up:

If you have an incompatible or empty compile_commands.json, nothing visible will happen (no progress indicator or error messages).

After indexing completes, you should see:

1. Files that were not used as greyed out in the Project Explorer
2. Open Declaration in the context menu of a selected identifier (or F3) should jump to the correct file. For example, my test sequence for this feature in the QMK repository is:
   • in tmk_core/protocol/chibios/main.c, open init_usb_driver
   • open usbStart, should bring up lib/chibios git submodule
   • open usb_lld_start, should bring up MIMXRT1062 port
3. Macros expanded correctly, e.g. MIMXRT1062_USB_USE_USB1 in the following example

Slow file exclusion in projects with many files

Bug 565457 explains an optimization in the algorithm used to generate the list of excluded paths, which I would summarize as “use whole directories instead of individual files”.

This optimization was introduced later, so in MCUXpresso v11.3, we still have to endure watching the slow algorithm for a few seconds:

Conclusion

NXP, please release a new MCUXpresso IDE with a more recent CDT version!

The improvements in the newer version would make the setup so much simpler.