Nios II Classic Software Developer’s Handbook

ID 683282
Date 5/14/2015
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.1.7. Debugging the Project on Nios II Hardware

This section describes how to debug a Nios II program using the Nios II SBT for Eclipse on Nios II hardware, such as an Intel FPGA development board.

To debug a software project, right-click the application project name, point to Debug As, and click Nios II Hardware. This command carries out the following actions:

  • Creates a Nios II run configuration.
  • Builds the project executable. If all target files are up to date, nothing is built.
  • If debugging on hardware, establishes communications with the target, and verifies that the FPGA is configured with the correct hardware design.
  • Downloads the .elf to the target memory.
  • Sets a breakpoint at the top of main().
  • Starts execution at the .elf entry point.

The Eclipse debugger with the Nios II plugins provides a Nios II perspective, allowing you to perform many common debugging tasks. Debugging a Nios II program with the Nios II plugins is generally the same as debugging any other C/C++ program with Eclipse and the CDT plugins.

For information about debugging with Eclipse and the CDT plugins, refer to the Eclipse help system.