VS Linux Remote project to VGDB

[AndreaOSAIcnc]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying VisualGDB using the 30-days trial.

I’m developing an application for an embedded target with an ARM Cortex-A53 (aarch64) CPU and Linux  (downstream kernel + Ubuntu FS).
Before VGDB I tried the Visual Studio Linux Workload that exploit SSH to transfer sources to the target and then compile.

Now my goal is to convert this VS Linux project to a VGDB project.
I tried to add a VGDB configuration, but at the end of wizard it gives me an error.
I made a little Python script to convert the projects and the solution but I didn’t covered all the options/parameters.

My question is if there is a better way to convert the project/solution.

Thanks

[support]

Hi,

The logic for adding configurations is indeed intended for the regular Win32 projects, so that you could have Win32 configurations in parallel with VisualGDB configurations. The regular VS Linux projects use a different layout and the configuration adding logic won’t work for them.

The easiest way to import an existing project into VisualGDB would be to use the import mode of the wizard. It will automatically add all sources and headers from the specified directory to the new project, although you would need to specify other settings (e.g. preprocessor macros) manually.

You can also try using CMake to build your project. VisualGDB integration with CMake is far more advanced compared to the regular VS one (e.g. see our CMake script debugger) and at the same time will give you an easy option to build the project outside VisualGDB if you ever need to do so.

[AndreaOSAIcnc]

Thank you for the answer!

Yes, I’ve tried to add a VGDB configuration to a Win32 projects and it works perfectly.

Anyway, I tried the import node of the wizard but in my case it would take too much time; I have a lot of projects in the solution. Moreover, I saw that it creates a new solution for every projects, so I would have to merge them one by one in a single solution (besides create the VGDB config and insert all the parameters).

I’ve considered CMake, but changing our IDE is not in our plans, so the “overhead” due to changing our build system is not worth it.

Thank you again for the answer!

[support]

Thanks for clarifying it. If the solution contains multiple projects, switching it to CMake could have the benefit of separating orthogonal settings:

• Platform-specific settings (e.g. which compiler to use, global optimization flags, etc.) could be stored in a VisualGDB CMake project file
• Target-specific settings (which executables/libraries to build, how do they depend on each other, etc) could be stored in CMakeLists.txt files

You can read more about it here: https://visualgdb.com/tutorials/cmake/multiplatform/

But, if you already have a complex system of MSBuild projects and do not want to change it, using a simple script to convert the settings should be the best approach. You can read more about manually adding VisualGDB platforms in this tutorial. Also, if you need help understanding specific settings, feel free to let us know.

[AndreaOSAIcnc]

Yes, at the end I used the script to convert the VS Linux solution (+ projects) to VisualGDB.

Thank you for the support and congrats for the tutorials, they’re very helpful!

[support]

No problem and good to know it works. If you encounter further issues, feel free to create another thread.

[Author]

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