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Please note that our technical support is limited to VisualGDB issues only. If you are able to build the project outside VisualGDB, please follow our ESP32 troubleshooting guide to get it to build with VisualGDB as well.
If building the project outside VisualGDB is not working as well, the only way to resolve it would be to do a detailed review of the project itself, and the cost of doing that would quickly exceed what we charge per license. Hence we are not able to include project-specific help with our technical support.
For general help getting ESP32 projects to work please consider posting on the ESP32 forum instead.
Looks like the project you are trying to import is not based on the original ESP-IDF or ESP-ADF, but requires the ESP-VA SDK that may not work with VisualGDB out-of-the-box. You might be able to get it working by addressing the VA SDK-specific issues on your side, however unfortunately we won’t be able to provide any help with this until we officially support this SDK.
We will continue monitoring the traction of the ESP-VA SDK and will consider adding out-of-the-box support for it once it becomes more popular.
No worries, we are happy to help you fix the issues with your project as a part of our consulting services. Feel free to reach out to our sales team to get a quote.
Thanks for the screenshots. Looks like you are using an older version of VisualGDB and an incompatible toolchain.
Please update to the latest VisualGDB 5.5 Preview 7 and follow our ESP-ADF tutorial to create a basic project. Make sure you use the v2.0 release of ESP-ADF, and not the master branch, and also a toolchain based on GCC 5.2.0 (ESP-ADF does not support the latest toolchain).
Once you are able to create a new ESP-ADF project from scratch, you should be able to import existing ones as well.
Hi,
The best way to convert the project into an MSBuild-based one would be to find a way to dump all the gcc command lines used by the current setup (each Makefile handles this differently, so please check the RIOT OS documentation for more details), and then create a new VisualGDB project from scratch and adjust its build settings to match the captured command lines.
You can find the exact command lines used by VisualGDB to build an MSBuild-based project in the .rsp files.
We also have a detailed tutorial on using .rsp files to troubleshoot imported projects here: https://visualgdb.com/tutorials/arm/import/diagnose/
If you do not want to spend time learning the autotools/Make internals, or porting the project from WSL to Windows-based build tools, please try importing the project as a Linux-based project built with external tools under WSL and make sure the manual build command line matches one that is already working. As long as both VisualGDB and the manual build are using WSL, they should produce identical results.
No problem, you can find them here: https://github.com/sysprogs/tutorials/tree/master/visualgdb/ARM/stm32/STM32MultiCoreDemo
Sorry about that. We have double-checked the STM32H745ZI support with the latest OpenOCD and it did work as expected. Please make sure you install the latest VisualGDB 5.5 Preview 7 and update the OpenOCD package and the STM32 BSP via Tools->VisualGDB->Manage VisualGDB Packages.
Please also try erasing the entire FLASH memory of the device via the STM32 ST-Link Utility.
If it still doesn’t help, please share the screenshots of the GUI that is missing the M4 option you mentioned, and we will help you understand what is going on.
Thanks for attaching the screenshot. VisualGDB should never color the regular Output window (hence we wanted to double-check you are not still accidentally using Advanced output).
We have rechecked the coloring behavior with the latest VS2019 16.6.2 and could not get the coloring shown on your screenshot. Please double-check that you are not using additional extensions that could be coloring the output. You can disable various extensions via the Extensions->Manage Extensions command.
If it doesn’t help, please try disabling the VisualGDB extension via that command and restarting VS. If the project is based on GNU Make, you will still be able to build it (although VisualGDB won’t be loaded into the VS and should not interfere with the IDE responsiveness). If this still results in a slow behavior, please try creating a regular Win32 console project and check if building it slows down VS as well.
Hi,
It is hard to say what is going on without knowing more details. Please share a screenshot of the Help->About VisualGDB window and the build errors you encounter and we can point you to the right direction.
No problem. Please let us know the email address associated with your license key so that we could link it to your support profile, and we will point you to the right direction.
Hi,
Please see the following page for instructions on troubleshooting this: https://visualgdb.com/documentation/linkerinputs/
No problem, we can help you get this to work. Please try modifying the code to control one of the LEDs from the M4 core. Then check if the core gets started when you are not debugging it (i.e. program the FLASH both memory banks and power cycle the device).
If the second core never starts outside the debugger as well, please try comparing the startup code on the first core with some example that manages to start the second core successfully. Most likely, the example is missing some code for actually starting the M4 core.
No problem. MSBuild does support common flags and linker flags via Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Command Line. If you need separate C/C++ flags, you can set them via C/C++->Advanced.
We do advise reading our documentation on MSBuild and STM32 project structure. It’s a long read, but it gives an extensive overview of all common settings types, and will save you considerable time long-term once you learn how to use it efficiently.
You will also get much faster build times, fewer rebuilds, single-file building, precompiled header support, and many other usability features that are not supported for Make projects.
Thanks for confirming your license. We will try to explain what is going on.
When you convert the project to a stand-alone one without copying the BSP files, it removes the references to all files from the BSP (including the linker script, register definition file, common preprocessor macros, etc). This option is intended for advanced users that would like to manually re-create the minimum necessary subset of files from scratch. It indeed will not result in a buildable project and will require some manual tweaking before you can get it to work. We have confirmed that this option left the reference to the register definition file (but did not copy it) and updated VisualGDB internally to remove the reference.
If this behavior is not intended, please try copying the BSP instead, and then remove the unnecessary files. This way you will start with a usable project and will be able to verify that it still builds after each step.
Also, depending on your requirements, you may not need a stand-alone project after all. If you want to remove the standard driver files, but keep the linker script and peripheral register definitions, you can simply unreference them on the the Embedded Frameworks page instead.
Regarding the out-of-sync Makefiles, this is a known limitation of the GNU Make build subsystem (see this page for a list of known limitations). For all new projects we advise using MSBuild instead. It does not require duplicating the settings between Visual Studio and the actual build subsystem (i.e. GNU Make) and hence eliminates many possible failure points.
If you would like to build the project outside Visual Studio, you can try out our experimental Embedded CMake integration. It combines the advantages of both GNU Make and MSBuild:
- The build is entirely managed by CMake scripts, that you can easily edit and build outside VisualGDB.
- Solution Explorer contents is rendered based on the exact CMake code model, so it’s always up-to-date.
- It also does not have multiple sets of settings for debug/release, avoiding the issue you mentioned.
The Embedded CMake projects are currently still very experimental and cannot be created using the wizard yet, but if you would like to try them out, we can share the instructions here.
