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From the Horse’s Mouth

Dive into the preferences and criticisms of embedded developers on Eclipse-based tools, based on a survey of 30 developers. Find out what they like and dislike, their satisfaction levels, preferred features, and more.

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From the Horse’s Mouth

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  1. From the Horse’s Mouth What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools

  2. The Product • The ON Semiconductor SignaKlara Development Environment • An assembly and C development environment • Based on Eclipse 3.3 (and very soon Eclipse 3.4) • Fairly small user base (relatively speaking) • We make money on silicon, not software • Target devices are ultra-low-power DSPs with very little memory and no OS! • Multi-core (DSP and re-configurable co-processor)

  3. The Product (continued) • Not based on the CDT • Platform-only (plus CVS support) • Assembly-language development environment • Some C support • External toolchain called from our Eclipse-based build system via Ant • Custom debugger implemented in Java • Scriptable with Jython • Underlying C++ communications library • Primarily USB/serial connection to embedded target

  4. The Survey • Targeted sample of ~30 developers • Anonymous, administered with SurveyMonkey • Approximately 60% internal, 40% external • Surveyed developer characteristics • 71% medical devices, 25% consumer electronics industries • 58% spend most or all of their time developing embedded software • 68% have been doing embedded development >5 years • Languages used daily • Mostly assembly (87%), Python (65%), and C (49%) Consumer Electronics (25%) Other (4%) None (8%) All (13%) Some (33%)

  5. The Survey (continued) • Familiar with Visual Studio (92%), Code Composer (33%), and Code Warrior (17%) • Over 90% of respondents were Satisfied or Extremely Satisfied with our Eclipse-based product • 76% have never used any other Eclipse product, but 100% knew our product is based on Eclipse Somewhat Satisfied (9%) Extremely Satisfied (24%) Somewhat Dissatisfied (0%) Extremely Dissatisfied (0%)

  6. The Good • Most liked features • Debugging embedded applications on target devices • Building source code into executables and libraries • Source code editing and modification • Top rated items in terms of user satisfaction • Source code editing and modification • Application look and feel • Building source code into executables and libraries • Debugging embedded applications on target devices • Application usability

  7. The Bad • Biggest Eclipse-specific gripes: • Application performance (>30%) • Source code organization and project management • Lowest rated in terms of satisfaction • Application performance • Source code organization and project management https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=35973([resources] Better project organization) • Is this really a platform issue or a build setup issue?

  8. Summary • 65% of respondents think our Eclipse-based product is somewhat better, or better by farthan other products they have used in the past. • 60% of respondents say that our Eclipse-based product is their favorite product for embedded development. • On the whole, embedded developers like Eclipse, but perhaps are not aware of other plug-ins. • Eclipse’s reputation precedes itself. No Better / No Worse (25%) Slightly Worse (10%) Far Worse (0%) Better By Far (10%)

  9. Interesting Comments • A recurring feature request was some way to graph memory. A graphical rendering for the memory view may be useful. • Suggestion of the concept of configurable levels of abstraction (Capabilities?). Perhaps this feature could be leveraged more?

  10. Questions?

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