Skip to main content

Eclipse IDE for Embedded Developers Now Runs on the Raspberry Pi!

The Eclipse IDE is the project that started it all for the Eclipse Foundation. From the beginning, Eclipse IDE was meant to run on multiple platforms; it now supports Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Since it is written in Java, it also supports multiple processor architectures. However, support for 32-bit architectures has been dropped in version 2018-12. This meant recent versions of the IDE would not run on the Raspberry Pi anymore.

The introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 in June 2019 gave hope to Eclipse on Pi fans. With its 64-bit quad core ARM Cortex-A72, the Pi 4 was a good hardware platform to work with. It became even more attractive in May 2020, with the introduction of the 8Gb variant. The Eclipse community took notice of those developments. Version 2020-09 of Eclipse IDE now ships with experimental support for 64-bit ARM (aarch64) on Linux. 

Those developments mean embedded and IoT developers can now work on the Raspberry Pi 4 by installing the plugins provided by the Eclipse IDE for Embedded C/C++ Developers project. Formerly known as GNU MCU, the plugins have been contributed to the Eclipse Foundation and are now an official Eclipse project. In addition, the plugins are now built on the CI infrastructure of the Eclipse Foundation and the relevant procedures have been fully documented.

The Eclipse IDE for Embedded C/C++ Developers plugins offer the following features:

  • Creation, build and management of embedded ARM/AArch64/RISC-V applications, using the managed project features of Eclipse CDT
  • Ready to run templates for some ARM Cortex-M processors
  • Debugging support via JTAG/SWD
  • Special view to examine and modify peripheral registers during debug sessions 

In other words: it is now possible to code, build, debug and flash directly on a Raspberry Pi 4!  

Screenshot of Eclipse IDE for Embedded C/C++ Developers running on the Raspberry Pi 4
Please visit the project's website to learn more. The recommended configuration is a Raspberry Pi with 8Gb of RAM and a USB SSD. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Eclipse ThreadX: Charting our course for 2025

On November 21, 2023, Microsoft announced that it was contributing Azure RTOS to the Eclipse Foundation, which gave birth to the Eclipse ThreadX project . Since then, the project team and Eclipse Foundation staff have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to transition ThreadX to a true community-driven open source project and ensure its continued certification for safety-critical applications. In this short post, I will review the major milestones of that first year and share what to expect from the team in 2025. ThreadX v6.4.1 On February 28, 2024, the ThreadX project released version 6.4.1 of ThreadX and its companion modules. This release, the first made under the Eclipse Foundation development process, completed the transition of ThreadX to open source. From a technical standpoint, there were no changes from the prior 6.4.0 release. And yet, v6.4.1 represents a significant milestone. The Eclipse Foundation intends to certify ThreadX v6.4.1 for safety-critical applications. Yo...

A Robotic Dream Team: ROS 2 and Cyclone DDS

The Eclipse Cyclone DDS team has been hard at work recently ; this got them noticed in a big way. Open Robotics recently declared that Eclipse Cyclone DDS will be a tier one middleware in ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy! Eclipse Cyclone DDS, an implementation of the Data Distribution Service standard under the stewardship of the DDS Foundation and the Object Management Group (OMG), is a project of the Eclipse IoT and OpenADx working groups. Some of the key benefits of Cyclone DDS include: Secure ROS 2 (SROS2) integration & testing contributed by Eclipse IoT member Canonical .  Implementation of DDS Security contributed, tested, optimized and ready for ROS users. The team backported this feature to the ROS 2 Dashing and Eloquent releases! Full coverage of QoS supported by ROS including lifespan and deadline  New high-speed RMW serializer contributed by Rover Robotics Ability to discover a single robot among a swarm of 1,000+ (thanks to iRobot for the use case!) Too many performan...