© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 | March 13th, 2008 | ON Semiconductor

From the Horse’s Mouth

What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Product

• The ON Semiconductor SignaKlara Development Environment

An assembly and C development environment Based on Eclipse 3.3 (and very soon Eclipse 3.4)

• Fairly small user base (relatively speaking) We make money on silicon, not software

• Target devices are ultra-low-power DSPs with very little memory and no OS!

• Multi-core (DSP and re-configurable co-processor)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Product (continued)

• Not based on the CDT Platform-only (plus CVS support)

• Assembly-language development environment Some C support

• External toolchain called from our Eclipse-based build system via Ant

• Custom debugger implemented in Java Scriptable with Jython

• Underlying C++ communications library Primarily USB/serial connection to embedded

target

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Survey

• Targeted sample of ~30 developers Anonymous, administered with SurveyMonkey

• Approximately 60% internal, 40% external• Surveyed developer characteristics

71% medical devices, 25% consumer electronics industries 58% spend most or all of their time developing embedded

software 68% have been doing embedded development >5 years

• Languages used daily Mostly assembly (87%), Python (65%), and C (49%)

Consumer Electronics (25%)

Other (4%)

All (13%)

None (8%)

Some (33%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Survey (continued)

• Familiar with Visual Studio (92%), Code Composer (33%), and Code Warrior (17%)

• Over 90% of respondents were Satisfied or Extremely Satisfied with our Eclipse-based product

• 76% have never used any other Eclipse product, but 100% knew our product is based on Eclipse

Extremely Satisfied (24%)

Somewhat Satisfied (9%)

Somewhat Dissatisfied (0%)Extremely Dissatisfied (0%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Good

• Most liked features• Debugging embedded applications on target devices• Building source code into executables and libraries• Source code editing and modification

• Top rated items in terms of user satisfaction• Source code editing and modification • Application look and feel• Building source code into executables and libraries• Debugging embedded applications on target devices• Application usability

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

Most Liked Features

Source code organization and project management

Source code editing and modification

Building source code into executables and libraries

Debugging embedded applications on target devices

Communicating and accessing data on target devices

Working with and managing non-volatile memory on target devices

Team-based development and source code control

Quality and accessibility of documentation

Application look and feel

Application usability

Application performance

Application extensibility (plug-ins)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

The Bad

• Biggest Eclipse-specific gripes:• Application performance (>30%)• Source code organization and project management

• Lowest rated in terms of satisfaction• Application performance• Source code organization and project management

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=35973([resources] Better project organization)

• Is this really a platform issue or a build setup issue?

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

Least Liked Features

Source code organization and project management

Source code editing and modification

Building source code into executables and libraries

Debugging embedded applications on target devices

Communicating and accessing data on target devices

Working with and managing non-volatile memory on target devices

Team-based development and source code control

Quality and accessibility of documentation

Application look and feel

Application usability

Application performance

Application extensibility (plug-ins)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

Summary

• 65% of respondents think our Eclipse-based product is somewhat better, or better by far than other products they have used in the past.

• 60% of respondents say that our Eclipse-based product is their favorite product for embedded development.

• On the whole, embedded developers like Eclipse, but perhaps are not aware of other plug-ins.

• Eclipse’s reputation precedes itself.

Better By Far (10%)

No Better / No Worse (25%)

Slightly Worse (10%)

Far Worse (0%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

Interesting Comments

• A recurring feature request was some way to graph memory. A graphical rendering for the memory view may be useful.

• Suggestion of the concept of configurable levels of abstraction (Capabilities?). Perhaps this feature could be leveraged more?

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

Questions?