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Category Archives: General
CMake Part 2 – Release and Debug builds
Associate Instructor at Feabhas Ltd
An independent IT trainer Martin has over 40 years academic and commercial experience in open systems software engineering. He has worked with a range of technologies from real time process controllers, through compilers, to large scale parallel processing systems; and across multiple sectors including industrial systems, semi-conductor manufacturing, telecomms, banking, MoD, and government.
Latest posts by Martin Bond (see all)
- C++20 Coroutine Iterators - September 23, 2021
- C++20 Coroutines - September 16, 2021
- CMake Part 4 – Windows 10 Host - September 2, 2021
In my previous blog post CMake Part – The Dark Arts I discussed how to configure CMake to cross-compile to target hardware such as our STM32F407 Discovery board.
We looked at the minimum requirements to configure the CMake build generator for a cross-compilation project using a project definition file (CMakeLists.txt), a toolchain definition file (toolchain-STM32F407.cmake). The CMake commands used to generate and build the project are:
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=toolchain-STM32F407.cmake
cmake –build build
In the real world, projects are never as simple […]
Posted in ARM, Build-systems, C/C++ Programming, Cortex, General, Toolchain
Tagged CMake, Cross Compiler
10 Comments
GitHub Codespaces and online development
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
- Using final in C++ to improve performance - November 14, 2022
- Understanding Arm Cortex-M Intel-Hex (ihex) files - October 12, 2022
In our previous posting, we discussed using VSCode’s Dev Container extension to allow running workspaces directly within a Docker container.
In December 2020, I was granted early access to a new feature developed by GitHub called Codespaces. Codespaces offers an online VSCode development environment, enabling you to develop entirely in the cloud.
The great news is that Codespaces uses the same core process, and file structure, as Dev Containers; meaning once we have our .devcontainer folder setup (if you are unfamiliar with […]
Posted in Agile, C/C++ Programming, General, Industry Analysis, Testing
Tagged Codespaces, docker, GitHub, GoogleTest, Meson, VSCode
Leave a comment
Running the eclipse-mosquitto MQTT Broker in a docker container
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
- Using final in C++ to improve performance - November 14, 2022
- Understanding Arm Cortex-M Intel-Hex (ihex) files - October 12, 2022
I first wrote about MQTT and IoT back in 2012, when I developed a simple C based library to publish and subscribe Quality of Service (QoS) level 0 MQTT messages.
Subsequently, MQTT has grown to be one of the most widely used IoT connectivity protocols with direct support from service such as AWS. Back in 2010, the first open-source MQTT Broker was Mosquitto. Mosquitto is now part of the Eclipse Foundation, and an iot.eclipse.org project, sponsored by cedalo.com.
Another area that has […]
Brace initialization of user-defined types
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
Uniform initialization syntax is one of my favourite features of Modern C++. I think it’s important, in good quality code, to clearly distinguish between initialization and assignment.
When it comes to user-defined types – structures and classes – brace initialization can throw up a few unexpected issues, and some counter-intuitive results (and errors!).
In this article, I want to have a look at some of the issues with brace initialization of user-defined types – specifically, brace elision and initializer_lists.
Read on for more…
Like (4)
Posted in C/C++ Programming, General
Tagged brace elision, brace initializer syntax, C++11, C++14, C++17, initialization, Modern C++, std::initializer_list
1 Comment
Thanks for the memory (allocator)
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
One of the design goals of Modern C++ is to find new ways – better, more effective – of doing things we could already do in C++. Some might argue this is one of the more frustrating aspects of Modern C++ – if it works, don’t fix it (alternatively: why use lightbulbs when we have perfectly good candles?!)
This time we’ll look at a new aspect of Modern C++: the Allocator model for dynamic containers. This is currently experimental, but has […]
Technical debt
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
What is it & how does it affect software engineering management?
The ‘Golden Triangle’ of project management
The ‘golden triangle’ of project management uses the following constraints:
The rule is: you can pick any two of three; you can’t have them all.
When it comes to software development projects, it’s not uncommon to have a fixed time to market and budget, which means that, under pressure, the constraint that’s affected is quality.
Commonly, when the project management refers to ‘quality’ it implicitly means Intrinsic Quality.
Intrinsic […]
Code Quality – Cyclomatic Complexity
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
- Using final in C++ to improve performance - November 14, 2022
- Understanding Arm Cortex-M Intel-Hex (ihex) files - October 12, 2022
In the standard ISO 26262-6:2011 [1] the term “complexity” appears a number of times, generally in the context of reducing or lowering said complexity.
There are many different ways of defining “complexity”, for example, Fred Brooks, in his 1986 landmark paper, “No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering” asserts that there are two types of complexity; Essential and Accidental. [2]
Rather than getting into esoteric discussion about design complexity, I’d like to focus on code complexity.
Over the years, I […]
Posted in Agile, C/C++ Programming, General, Testing
Tagged cyclomatic complexity, McCabe, Static Analysis
Leave a comment
Setting up Sublime Text to build your project
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
For many years embedded development was dominated by complex integrated development environments (IDEs) that hide away all the nasty, messy details of a typical embedded software project.
Recently, with the rapidly accelerating adoption of agile techniques in embedded systems, there has been a move away from integrated development environments towards smaller, simpler, individual tools. Tools like CMake, Rake and SCons are used to manage build configurations. Container facilities like Docker provide lightweight environments for build and test. And developers are free […]
Posted in Agile, C/C++ Programming, General
Tagged agile for embedded, build process, scons, Sublime Text, Toolchain
1 Comment
An Introduction to Docker for Embedded Developers – Part 2 Building Images
Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Latest posts by Niall Cooling (see all)
- Disassembling a Cortex-M raw binary file with Ghidra - December 20, 2022
- Using final in C++ to improve performance - November 14, 2022
- Understanding Arm Cortex-M Intel-Hex (ihex) files - October 12, 2022
In the initial post, we covered the basics of getting Docker setup and using an official base image for compilation.
But let’s suppose the base image doesn’t include all the facilities our company uses for development. For example, we have migrated from make files to CMake, but more lately we have taken to using the python-based Scons build system for C/C++ projects.
The official gcc base image supports make but not Scons or CMake. As before, we can search for a Scons docker […]
Making things do stuff – Part 8
Technical Consultant at Feabhas Ltd
Glennan is an embedded systems and software engineer with over 20 years experience, mostly in high-integrity systems for the defence and aerospace industry.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
He specialises in C++, UML, software modelling, Systems Engineering and process development.
Latest posts by Glennan Carnie (see all)
- Practice makes perfect, part 3 – Idiomatic kata - February 27, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 2– foundation kata - February 13, 2020
- Practice makes perfect, part 1 – Code kata - January 30, 2020
We’ve been using templates to provide a hardware register abstraction for use with hardware manipulation problems, typical of what you’d find in a deeply-embedded (“bare-metal”) system.
Previously, we looked at using trait classes to establish pointers and tag-dispatch to handle special-case registers, such as read-only or write-only register.
In this article we’re going to add some syntactic sugar to our Register class, to allow the developer to access individual bits in the register using array-index ([]) notation. This will allow us to […]