Eclipse emulator will not run or stop at main()

Kernel
1

I have a board that I know works. I can run an eclipse emulator on it for a rather involved application. I took all the source code out for my project and am trying the freertos demo code for the altera nios processor. When I start the emulator it downloads and looks like it will start but does not stop at main nor can I pause it. I am not sure what info I can provide to help with this. I do know I had to change the heap of 8000000 to 0x2000 I do not have “that” much RAM. Other than that it should be the demo code. This is quartus 18.1
Any ideas are appreciated.
Thanks,
Martin

2

Going to start with some simple questions to rule out the basic causes first…

  1. How are you building the FreeRTOS demo? Are you enabling debugging information? Debugging metadata is needed by Eclipse to allow for things like breakpoints to work
  2. Which demo are you using?
3

How do you know that is starts? Can you do something like blink an LED which can confirm if the code is running and just the debugging is not able connect?

4

Hi,

When you ask am I enabling debug information, I did not know this but under windows-preferences-general-error Reporting → there is enable debug mode, I turned that on and it at least stops at main.

Under the project properties-nios II application properties, the debug level is on. Optimization off. I am not sure exactly which one you refer to, the configuration of the project that works is the same as this project minus the enable debug mode and the other project works. So that is puzzling.

I cannot step into the code yet, even the prvSetupHardware call (the line the emulator breaks on for break on main) does not allow me to step. This is progress though so any other ideas are welcome.

I used - freeRtos\Demo\NiosII_CycloneIII_DBC3C40_GCC

Thanks,

Martin

5

I tried adding a simple
IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_PIO_SET_BITS(PIO_OUTPUT32_BASE0, 1<<5);
then
IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_PIO_CLEAR_BITS(PIO_OUTPUT32_BASE0, 1<<5);
which turns on an led and then turns off the same led.
I can break on this line but no step over.

6

Seems like a tooling issue. I’d recommend contacting your vendor.

7

Hi, This is the altera tool we use for many projects. I have seen this type of behavior before when things get mapped incorrectly or there are literal definitions of addresses that cause this type of issue. I am not aware of what would cause it in this project. Is there something configured and initialized that would cause the project to not run properly, like it has configured a timer or something else but it is not at the address used.

8

Were you able to resolve your issue? Reading through this thread again - I’m not sure I have enough information to really help but I agree with Garuav’s assessment. The fact that you cannot step through leads me to believe that debugging information which should be generated during compilation is missing.

Also you mentioned using Eclipse. Did you follow the setup instructions here?