[support]

Thanks for sharing this and good to know it works. We would still advise setting the AGENT_WORKFOLDER variable, as it would suppress various interactive prompts (e.g. about activating the new version after an update, or installing missing toolchains/BSPs).

[support]

Sorry, Visual Assist only works with regular VC++ projects (i.e. Embedded Project Wizard) and not with advanced projects such as the new ESP-IDF project type, as those projects are not based on VC++ and Visual Assist does not know how to attach to them.

You can use the regular Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts and Colors to modify the syntax highlighting colors for both regular C/C++ and VisualGDB-based projects.

If you are missing some fine-grain highlighting rules/settings, please feel free to let us know. The code highlighting for ESP-IDF projects is fully managed by VisualGDB, so we might be able to add a few extra cases there as long as it doesn’t require a major change on our side.

[support]

Most likely, VisualGDB was not activated on the machine/account where you are running the build and hence it tries to display the key prompt.

The easiest way to get it to work would be to ensure you can build the projects manually on the same machine using the same user account.

We would also advise setting the AGENT_WORKFOLDER environment variable (used by TFS) to a non-empty value so that VisualGDB will activate the unattended mode, reducing the amount of prompts and GUI.

If this doesn’t help, please let us know and we will help you get it to work.

[support]

Sorry, the IntelliSense behavior looks correct. You can double-check this by completing the expression manually and checking whether the code compiles without errors. If it does, but VisualGDB still doesn’t suggest it, please let us know.

[support]

Hi,

If you are using OpenOCD, please try adding the mon flash write_image command to the gdb startup commands.

[support]

Please let us know the email associated with your license key so that we could check your support status.

[support]

Most likely you have accidentally installed a newer version of the ESP-IDF (the pre-release versions are very, very buggy, so we generally recommend using official releases only). Please try deleting and reinstalling the ESP32 toolchain via Tools->VisualGDB->Manage VisualGDB Packages.

[support]

Sorry, we still need a specific sequence of steps that could reproduce the problem on our side in order to do anything about it. Generally, C# and C++ use completely different underlying mechanisms in Visual Studio, so it could be triggered by something completely different.

The only other similar issue known to us is that running debug sessions with large amounts of live variables would leak memory due to a bug in VS (about 200 live variables with maximum refresh rate consume all available RAM in about 2-3 hours).

[support]

Sorry, the fully supported and easy-to-use way to support excluding files for specific configurations would be to switch to MSBuild. We have specifically designed our MSBuild backend to be fast and support multiple advanced scenarios and this one is definitely one of them.

The alternative procedure with $(filter-out) would involve conditionally removing specific files from the SOURCEFILES variable based on checking the current CONFIG variable, but as it is error-prone and much more fragile, we only recommend doing it if you are familiar with GNU Make internals and would otherwise advise using MSBuild.

[support]

Thanks for the update. We have reproduced the problem on our side by manually duplicating some include directories in the .rsp file so that it exceeded the 32KB limit. It looks like a different issue from the 8KB limit that is successfully solved by using the rsp files.

We will review our Nordic BSP and will try to optimize the include paths. As a workaround, please try moving the BSP into a directory with a shorter path (e.g. c:\NordicBSP) and then create a .bsplink file instead of the original directory (e.g. %LOCALAPPDATA%\VisualGDB\EmbeddedBSPs\arm-eabi\com.sysprogs.arm.nordic.nrf5x.bsplink) that will contain the full path to the new short directory.

P.S. We have moved the reply from @MystikReasons to a separate thread to avoid confusion.

[support]

The latest changes to gcc/gdb mostly do not affect the barebone environments, hence we are not updating our default ARM toolchain regularly. If you are looking for a newer GCC/GDB combination, please try installing the official ARM toolchain. VisualGDB should recognize it out-of-the-box as a drop-in replacement for our default toolchain. The path issue reported by @Kenzi affects all gcc versions, so there should be no difference.

[support]

Thanks for the update. It looks like the project is indeed using MSBuild, so the command line length should normally not matter.

Please try reinstalling the ARM toolchain from scratch. If it doesn’t help, please try running the following command from the project directory:

arm-eabi-gcc.exe -v @VisualGDB\Debug\<one of the .gcc.rsp files>

Then, please share the verbose log produced by gcc.

[support]

Thanks for the screenshot. It does indeed look like an MSBuild-based project, so the command line length limitation should not trigger here.

That said, MSBuild projects will normally not echo the compiler command line to the build log, so the project might be still somehow configured to use GNU Make.

Could you please share the entire build log (here or via our support form) so that we could check what is going on?

[support]

Hi,

Yes, please try using MSBuild instead of GNU Make. Our MSBuild backend automatically uses response files to bypass the command line limitation.

[support]

Hi,

VisualGDB 5.1 is very old and is no longer maintained. Please consider updating to v5.4R5. It uses the “.hex” extension by default and also allows overriding it via the IntelHexFileExtension property in the .vcxproj file.

[Author]

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