Month: June 2022

Debugging CH32V103R with Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu #2

As I wrote in the previous post regarding debugging on the macOS environment, I figured out a way to avoid the Restart (Ctrl+Shift F5) and Disconnect (Shift+F5) operation issues I found in my past Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu post. So, I tested my finding on Ubuntu also.

At first, I edited the /etc/group file to add my Ubuntu account to the plugdev group (ncpin is my account name on Ubuntu).

/etc/group
[before]
plugdev:x:46:admin-user

[after]
plugdev:x:46:admin-user,ncpin

By doing this, I didn’t have to use the sudo command when I run the openocd command anymore. Since the Linux kernel sets the user group of the WCH-Link USB device to the plugdev group when the kernel detects the device according to the udev rule file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-wch.rules that I copied before, and if a user does not belong to the plugdev group, the user will need root privilege to access the WCH-Link USB device from a process like the openocd command.

I added the following line to the end of OpenOCD’s wch-riscv.cfg file.

$_TARGETNAME.0 configure -event gdb-detach { shutdown }

I replaced the contents of Visual Studio Code’s code-workspace JSON file as follows.

{
  "tasks": {
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
      {
        "label": "run_openocd",
        "type": "process",
        "isBackground": true,
        "command": "${workspaceRoot}/openocd",
        "args": ["-f", "${workspaceRoot}/wch-riscv.cfg"],
        "problemMatcher": [
          {
            "pattern": [
            {
              "regexp": ".",
              "file": 1,
              "location": 2,
              "message": 3
            }
            ],
            "background": {
            "activeOnStart": true,
            "beginsPattern": ".",
            "endsPattern": "."
            }
          }
          ]
      }
    ]
  },
  "folders": [
    {
      "path": "."
    }
  ],
  "launch": {
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
      {
        "name": "gdb-openocd",
        "type": "gdb",
        "request": "attach",
        "executable": "exiti0.elf",
        "remote": true,
        "target": ":3333",
        "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
        "gdbpath": "riscv32-unknown-elf-gdb",
        "preLaunchTask": "run_openocd",
        "autorun": [
          "set mem inaccessible-by-default off",
          "set architecture riscv:rv32",
          "set remotetimeout unlimited",
          "monitor reset halt",
          "load"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

(Please note that this setting file assumes that both the openocd command and the wch-riscv.cfg file exists at the workspace root directory of the Visual Studio Code project)

With the above changes, I no longer needed to run the openocd command separately. When I started the debug operation, Visual Studio Code automatically ran the openocd command in the background, and the launched openocd command stopped when I chose the Restart (Ctrl+Shift F5) and Disconnect (Shift+F5) command. And I was able to start debugging again also, unlike before.

Debugging CH32V307V with Visual Studio Code on macOS

As the final testing of the CH32V series RISC-V MCU development environment on Mac, I tried whether I could debug a program running on WCH’s CH32V307RCT6 evaluation board (CH32V307V-EVT-R1) or not with Visual Studio Code in the same way as I did before on my Ubuntu 20.04 environment.

I tested Visual Studio Code using the same CH32V307 example as the previous post. This time, to generate debugging information, I added -g and -O0 to the GCC options in the Makefile (Here is the updated file) and rebuilt the example.

After installing Visual Studio Code to my MacBook Pro (intel, 13inch, 2020), I added the Native Debug extension by WebFreak.

I saved a workspace of Visual Studio Code into the ch32v307/EVT/EXAM/GPIO/GPIO_Toggle/User directory and added this directory to the workspace also. Then I created a launch.json file by clicking create a launch.json file(1), (2) and selecting the workplace (3) and GDB(4) items.

I replaced the contents of the created JSON file with the following.

{
	"tasks": {
		"version": "2.0.0",
		"tasks": [
			{
				"label": "run_openocd",
				"type": "process",
				"isBackground": true,
				"command": "${userHome}/csfs/openocd/openocd",
				"args": ["-f", "${userHome}/csfs/openocd/wch-riscv.cfg"],
				"problemMatcher": [
					{
					  "pattern": [
						{
						  "regexp": ".",
						  "file": 1,
						  "location": 2,
						  "message": 3
						}
					  ],
					  "background": {
						"activeOnStart": true,
						"beginsPattern": ".",
						"endsPattern": ".",
					  }
					}
				  ]
			}
		]
	},
	"folders": [
		{
			"path": "."
		}
	],
	"launch": {
		"version": "0.2.0",
		"configurations": [
			{
				"name": "gdb-openocd",
				"type": "gdb",
				"request": "attach",
				"executable": "gpio_toggle.elf",
				"remote": true,
				"target": ":3333",
				"cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
				"gdbpath": "${userHome}/csfs/x-tools/riscv32-unknown-elf/bin/riscv32-unknown-elf-gdb",
				"preLaunchTask": "run_openocd",
				"autorun": [
					"set mem inaccessible-by-default off",
					"set architecture riscv:rv32",
					"set remotetimeout unlimited",
					"monitor reset halt",
					"load"
				]
			}
		]
	}
}

Before starting the debugging with Visual Studio Code, I mounted the disk image I made in a new Terminal window.

hdid -nomount csfs.sparseimage
mount -t hfs /dev/disk2s2 csfs
export PATH="$HOME/csfs/x-tools/riscv32-unknown-elf/bin:$HOME/csfs/openocd:$PATH"

Then I added the following line to the end of OpenOCD’s config file $HOME/csfs/openocd/wch-riscv.cfg to avoid the Restart and Disconnection issue I found when I tried to run Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu.

$_TARGETNAME.0 configure -event gdb-detach { shutdown }

I set a breakpoint in main.c and started debugging by selecting the Start Debugging (F5) item under the Run menu.

As far as I tested briefly, debugging on Visual Studio Code worked pretty well. This time I was able to figure out a way to avoid the Restart (Ctrl+Shift F5) and Disconnect (Shift+F5) operation issues that I found when I tried Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu by modifying OpenOCD’s config file and defining preLaunchTask to the Visual Studio Code setting.

[Added on 2022-07-08]
I uploaded my ch32v307/EVT/EXAM/GPIO/GPIO_Toggle/ directory as the tgz file just for reference. My Visual Studio Code project file (GPIO_Toggle.code-workspace) with the above setting is also included in the tgz file.