Remote Development of Mobotware Using Eclipse

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It is possible to use an Eclipse, running locally on one's computer to remotely develop Mobotware residing in Kalman. This tutorial will describe how to set up eclipse so that one can:

  • use full features of Eclipse including indexing, content assist, error highlighting and much more...
  • build on the automation servers from inside Eclipse
  • debug the code running on the SMRs while stepping through the source code and observing variables in Eclipse

The following description is for Eclipse Galileo (Eclipse 3.5.2), hopefully, the steps will not be very different in future versions.

There are essentially 4 things to do:

  • Install Eclipse and the required plug-ins
  • Mounted on the local file system the Mobotware directory (or a sub-directory of it) residing in Kalman.
  • Set up an Eclipse project for remote development
  • Configure Eclipse to make sure all the nice features are available

NOTE: The windows tutorial is not finished as of this very moment!

Install Eclipse

One first needs to install Eclipse, along with the necessary plug-ins for C++ development as well as remote development. Installing Eclipse and enabling it for C++ development differs substantially between operating systems:

Windows

It is non-trivial to set up an Eclipse C++ development environment under windows. It is not particularly hard, but it's an integration between Eclipse, a plug-in called CDT and GCC ported to windows. It would be futile to list the steps as of writing this tutorial, as the process changes slightly depending on the versions of the named software elements. Try googling "C/C++ development using Eclipse under Windows" and come back when you have this working properly.

Now, it is necessary to install two other plug-ins for our task:

  • TM and RSE (Remote system Explorer)
  • Eclipse C/C++ Remote Launch

As you've probably already noticed while installing CDT, one installs Eclipse plug-ins through Help->Install New Sofware.... The drop down list next to Work with lists some software sites, but the ones we need are probably not there. Click on the 'Available Software Sites' link just under the Add... button to get a list of software sites compatible with your version of eclipse. You need to add:

RSE - http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm/updates/3.1 - for TM and RSE CDT - http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/galileo - for Eclipse C/C++ Remote Launch, under CDT Optional Features

Note that the above links and names might differ slightly depending on the version, but you're choosing from a list anyway.

Ubuntu

It is much easier to set up Eclipse for C++ development under Ubuntu. Simply type 

sudo apt-get install eclipse

At the command line to install eclipse. This will probably be vanilla Eclipse that won't support plug-ins. So, if you have problems installing the plug-ins later, type 

sudo apt-get install eclipse-pde

To prepare eclipse for the plug-ins. Eclipse plug-ins are installed through Help->Install New Sofware.... The drop down list next to Work with lists some software sites. We will install CDT (C/C++ Development Tools) from Galileo Update Site - http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/. This is for Eclipse Galileo of course, it will look slightly different on different versions. Select that site, and under Programming Languages mark Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools. Finish the installation by clicking Next and so on...

At this point, you should be able to create, compile, run and debug local C/C++ projects as long as you have gcc and make installed. If not, try 

sudo apt-get install gcc make

Now, it is necessary to install two other plug-ins for our task:

  • TM and RSE (Remote system Explorer)
  • Eclipse C/C++ Remote Launch

Go to Help->Install New Sofware... again, but the software sites we need are probably not in your drop down list. Click on the 'Available Software Sites' link just under the Add... button to get a list of software sites compatible with your version of eclipse. You need to add:

RSE - http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm/updates/3.1 - for TM and RSE CDT - http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/galileo - for Eclipse C/C++ Remote Launch, under CDT Optional Features

Note that the above links and names might differ slightly depending on the version, but you're choosing from a list anyway.

Mount the Mobotware directory

There are many ways to mount your home folder or directly the Mobotware directory residing on Kalman to your local file system. To avoid most complications, we will do it using sshfs here. In order to do so, we need to be able to connect to kalman.iau.dtu.dk using ssh.

If you are outside the automation network (such as on DTU wireless), you will have to tunnel to kalman through DTU G-Bar for instance. How to do this depends on your operating system. Note that, you do not need the tunneling step if you can already connect to kalman.iau.dtu.dk

Tunneling to Kalman

Windows

[www.putty.org putty] is a great and free ssh client for windows and it supports tunneling.

Ubuntu

In order to tunnel to kalman through G-Bar, you will simply need to type the following in a new terminal: 

ssh -L10000:kalman.iau.dtu.dk:22 {username}@login.gbar.dtu.dk

Don't forget to substitute {username} with your own.

Mounting a Directory from Kalman on Your File System

Windows

Dokan can be used to mount an sshfs drive on windows. Download and install the Dokan Library and then download and run the Dokan SSHFS

Ubuntu

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