0.3 A student to student intro to ide programming and ccs4

Firstly, this is by no means a comprehensive guide, but a few basics for students who have not been exposed to working in an IDE before. To look more closely at CCS4, see the help docs on ti.com ( (External Link) )

What is an ide:

IDE stands for “Integrated Development Environment,” and the philosophy behind creating an IDE is to combine all of the separate tools you would need to write, debug, and deploy code into one consistent program. Basically, CCS4 allows you to write code (in C, C++, or assembly) and push a single button to compile, assemble, link, and upload your code to the device (in our case the MSP430). CCS4 also has a built in debugger that launches when you run in debug mode, interfacing in real time with the hardware (through JTAG) and allowing you to see if your code does what you think it should do. Ultimately though, a sophisticated IDE is only a tool that allows you to write clean code more quickly—it will not code for you and relies on you the programmer to use it and take advantage of its potential.

Ccs4 and eclipse:

CCS4 is TI’s embedded specialty version of the eclipse framework. The eclipse IDE was developed open source for Java, and you will most likely see it again if you pursue higher level programming courses. Code Composer takes the framework given by Eclipse and tailors it to TI’s embedded processors and the real time needs of DSP. The things you learn about working in an Eclipse based work environment (or any sophisticated IDE) should help you efficiently write and debug code in the future. Eclipse is highly customizable . You can create different perspectives (see control buttons upper right hand corner) with different information views. Check out the “view” and “window” menus to explore different panes you can use.

Licenses

When you first open CCS4 on a computer, you will have to add the license server information (if you are a student using a university network license) or specify the location of the individual license file.

Workspaces and projects:

When you first start up CCS4, it will ask you to specify a workspace . This file directory is where CCS4 will save all of your raw C and asm files, as well as the compiled and linked executables before uploading them to the hardware. Inside your workspace, the Eclipse environment divides your files into projects. Each project has its own independent source files and configuration properties. In general, each lab you will complete for this class will be setup as a new project. One project at a time can be set as the “Active project” (by default it is the most recently created one. You can view and edit files from any project at any time, but pressing the debug button will compile and load the code for the active project, not necessarily what you think you are working on!).

Setting up a new project:

To start setting up a new project, go to the New project wizard (file→ new → CCS Project). The first step asks you for a project name —enter one you like! In the next window, it asks to select a project type. In this lab we will be using the MSP430 , so select it from the drop down menu and click next. (Don’t worry about the build configurations, the defaults are fine ). The next window asks about project dependencies… in other words, does your project need to reference functions and files already in another project. Most likely for this class you won’t have any, so again , leave this as is and click next. Now you have arrived at the most important section. This page configures the device specific compiler and assembler. For the “Device Variant,” select our chip, the MSP430G2231. Lastly, If you are working on one of the earlier labs with only assembly code, be sure to continue to the next menu and select the "Empty Assembly Only Project" template. This tells the IDE not to invoke the compiler and skip straight to assembling and linking. If you forget to set this option, the compiler will throw an error that it cannot find the required c function “void main()” in your assembly code. Don’t worry— if you mess something up, you can create a new project and just copy your code straight over.