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Flexible workflow for more efficient development
Development tools for embedded software Authors: Ralf Kern, Line Manager at Rutronik, and Clark Jarvis, Senior Staff Technical Marketer at Infineon
T
he success of a product also depends on the efficient development of the embedded software. For this,
developers and teams must be able to work together as flexibly as is optimal for them. The central question is, what features and capabilities do development tools need to bring to make this possible? Most semiconductor manufacturers offer their
own development tools to support efficient product development for their components. Whether these provide everything necessary for this can only be answered if more is considered than just the pure tools. Rather, a holistic development environment consisting of hardware and software tools, embedded runtime drivers, libraries, documentation and more is needed. Using Infineon’s ModusToolbox™ software as an example, we will show here what actually increases the efficiency of the embedded engineer’s development work. ModusToolbox software is an extensible development
environment that supports a wide range of Infineon microcontrollers and development kits. It includes a collection of various development tools, libraries and embedded runtime assets for flexible embedded software development. The desktop applications can be used to create new embedded projects, manage software components and configure device peripherals and middleware. Add to that the typical development tools for compiling, programming and debugging. They leverage numerous GitHub-hosted repositories from Infineon and partners that include code samples, board support packages, middleware and application support. Together with documentation, training content and a support community, the result is a complete workflow for embedded developers. The ideal workflow for development If you set out to find the ideal workflow for embedded
systems development, you do not have to look far. The first engineer you ask will swear that the workflow they personally follow is the right one. Therefore, since each development team or embedded developer has an own unique workflow, the development environment should provide a high degree of flexibility. This is also a central pillar of ModusToolbox software. Heart of the development process The heart of the development process is the integrated
Efficient product development requires not only the ideal tools, but also the appropriate software and community. (Source: Infineon)
24 FEBRUARY 2023 | ELECTRONICS TODAY
development environment (IDE). The embedded developer on a daily basis when coding and debugging embedded firmware uses it. Ideally, it should be a familiar environment for every developer. ModusToolbox includes an Eclipse-based IDE for users who want to develop within the Eclipse framework and with the Arm® GCC compiler. As an alternative editor, Microsoft VS Code is available, which uses exactly the same Arm GCC toolchain and build commands. Through the VS Code extensions, it provides full programming and debugging capabilities. In addition, ModusToolbox projects can also be used on all leading IDEs and toolchains with native support for IAR Embedded Workbench and Arm Microcontroller Developers Kit (µVision). However, a flexible and efficient development
environment must go beyond visual code editors and graphical debugging. That is why the core of
ModusToolbox software is a Makefile-based build system and a command-line shell to automate build systems and facilitate a continuous integration workflow. This scriptable build system is crucial for a truly flexible development environment that can be tailored to the exact requirements of the developer While doing so, he can be sure that the compiled output will be consistent with the supplied Eclipse IDE or VS code because it uses exactly the same build system commands and compiler options.
Such support for scriptable build commands and continuous integration lead quasi-automatically to workflows for collaborative development. Version control, Git repositories, make recipes - they are critical to the way embedded runtime assets are distributed and managed within ModusToolbox. At the same time, they are the central components for collaborative development within a team. Extending these capabilities of ModusToolbox to the user application code allows developers to collaborate efficiently within the team and ensure the correct versioning of the provided drivers, middleware, libraries and BSPs consistently in the continuous integration build flows.
HAL and low-level drivers open up more possibilities For embedded engineers, every decision represents a balancing of tradeoffs and optimizations. From the choice
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