Setting Up PET in Eclipse CDT

Eclipse CDT (Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers) offers a feature-rich development platform for C++, which facilitates editing, navigating, and debugging C++ source code. Eclipse CDT is available as a prepackaged bundle on http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ or it can be installed into an existing Eclipse installation via the Software Updates dialog.

In the following, I assume that Eclipse-CDT 6.0 and Subclipse is installed, that its workbench is located in ~/workbench and that PET should be set up as a project with two configurations, “debug” (allows for debugging in the Eclipse debugger) and “release” (optimized for speed). Before you go on, please make sure that the PetDependencies are satisfied.

Checking out the project

  • Open the SVN Repository Exploring perspective in Eclipse
  • Add the repository URL https://pet.opendfki.de/repos
  • Navigate to the branch you want to check out, e.g. “/pet/main”.
  • Click Checkout in the context menu.
  • Choose “Check out as a project using the New Project Wizard”.
  • In the New Project Wizard, choose the C++ Project Wizard.
  • There, choose the project name, e.g. “pet”, use “Makefile project / Empty project” as the project type and select “Other toolchain”.
  • Finish

Setting up the build directories

  • Open a terminal

  • Go to the freshly created project directory

    cd ~/workbench/pet

  • Initialize the build tools by running

    autoreconf -i

  • Create build directories for the different configurations:

      mkdir -p build/debug
  mkdir -p build/release

  • Configure the different build directories (add further options as required):

      cd build/debug
  ../../configure "CXXFLAGS=-g -O0"
  cd ../release
  ../../configure "CXXFLAGS=-g -O3" --disable-assert

Configuring the PET project in Eclipse

  • Switch to the C/C++ perspective
  • Click Refresh in the context menu of the new project “pet”
  • Open the Project Properties
  • In the “Resource” section
    • Set Text file encoding to “ISO-8859-1”

  • In “C/C++ General” –> “Paths and Symbols”

    • In the Includes tab, under GNU C++, add the workspace location “/pet/common” for all configurations, “/pet/build/debug” for the debug configuration and “/pet/build/release” for the release configuration (the latter two in order to resolve pet-config.h)
    • In the Source Location tab, add /pet/cheap, /pet/common, /pet/flop, /pet/fspp, and /pet/goofy in addition to the preconfigured /pet as the source folders for the two configurations
    • In the Output Location tab, add the respective build directories for the two configurations
  • In the “C/C++ Build” section
    • In “Manage Configurations”, create two configurations “debug” and “release” corresponding to the two build directories (other configurations are not needed then)
    • In the “Build location” area, set the build directory to ${workspace_loc:/pet/build/debug} for the debug configuration, and ${workspace_loc:/pet/build/release} for the release configuration
  • General Settings:

    • Either in “Window” –> “Preferences” –> “General” –> “Editors” –> “Text editors” or in “Project Properties” –> “C/C++ General” –> “Code Style”

      • Displayed tab size: 2
      • Insert spaces for tabs

    • To prevent spurious diffs, make sure that trailing whitespace is not removed on save under “Window” –> “Preferences” –> “C/C++” –> “Editor”.

Running / debugging PET in Eclipse

  • Set the active configuration to debug

  • Select Project –> Build Project.

    • You should see the make output in the Console view.
    • If make was successful, there should be a Binaries branch in the Project Explorer.

  • Go to Run –> Run Configurations.

    • Select “C/C++ Local Application”
    • Click on the create icon.
    • In the Main tab, search the project for the binary to run/debug, e.g. “cheap”.
    • In the Arguments tab, enter all arguments (minimally the grammar name for cheap) and select the grammar root directory as the working directory.
    • Click Run
    • Any run configuration is also a debug configuration, and vice versa.

Trac integration

There is an integration of Trac’s issue tracker into Eclipse using the Mylyn plugin. This allows you to view issues from Track’s issue tracker and add new ones directly from Eclipse.

  • Installing Mylyn:
  • Registering the PET task repository:
    • Open the Task Repositories view
    • Add Task Repository
    • Server: https://pet.opendfki.de/
    • Label: PET Trac
    • uncheck Anonymous and provide username and password
    • Validate Settings
    • Finish
  • Associate PET Trac with your PET project:
    • open PET project properties, Task Repositories
    • check PET Trac
  • Add a query (this will bring the tasks into your task list)
    • open Task List view
    • in context menu, execute New / Query
    • choose a query name, e.g. “All PET issues” and Finish

Common Problems

Problem: The project is not built. Console outputs:

make all 
make: *** No rule to make target `all'.  Stop.

Make is executed in the directory specified as the build location. Make sure that the current build directory is valid for your active build configuration.

Problem: The debugger stops at or jumps to the wrong positions.

Make sure that your debug directory was configured with “CXXFLAGS=-O0”.

Last update: 2011-10-09 by anonymous [edit]