CCS compared to CCE Pro Nit-picks and annoyances. Comments?

Edward Schwartz said:

1. THIS IS SIGNIFICANT: When a change is made in your source code CCE, the line number in the left column is highlighted in a pale purple. In CCS there is no indication that an edit has been made. Highlighting changed lines (until saving) is extremely helpful.

CCS 5.2 still highlights the left column in the changed line to purple. Attached is my screenshot after an edit.

Edward Schwartz said:

2. When right-clicking a function or variable, the context menu in CCE had Open Declaration and Open Definition. CCS only has Open Declaration. Plus in CCE you don’t have left-click in it first as you do in CCS to get the right-click context menu to open the declaration.

Yes, CCS5 only has "Open Declaration". As you may know, with CCSv5 we are using stock Eclipse in comparison to earlier versions that were customized by TI quite a bit. This is one of the things that changed when going with the newer version of Eclipse.

Edward Schwartz said:

3. Is there a way to set the tab size to 2 and to substitute spaces for tabs easily as in CCE (Windows -> Preferences -> Editors -> Text Editors.

This can still be set from Windows -> Preferences -> Editors -> Text Editors.

Edward Schwartz said:

4. My first installation failed (downloaded but the dialog hung where is should have begun installation. I found out because it did not like being installed in the My Documents folder, nor in C:\Program Files folder. It installed correctly when I kept the default folder, C:\ti.

Although the installation should still complete fine in directories with spaces in the path, it is recommended to install outside of the c:\Program Files(x86) folder when working with Windows 7 since CCS can have problems with the UAC. Please see this FAQ:
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/FAQ_-_CCSv5#Q:_Is_Windows_7_supported.3F

AartiG, thanks for your feedback. Here are my comments:

1. You wrote: "CCS 5.2 still highlights the left column in the changed line to purple. Attached is my screenshot after an edit."

Well it is NOT highlighted on my CCS V5.2.0.00069. Do I need to paste a screen shot to prove it or is my word enough? Is there a setting to control this? (If so, why isn't it the default setting?)

2. Can TI give suggestions to the Eclipse developers? If so, this should be a suggestion. (I meant to say in my original post that the variable must be SELECTED in order for the "Open Declaration" to work. In CCE the cursor could be anywhere on the variable word.)

3.  You said, "This can still be set from Windows -> Preferences -> Editors -> Text Editors".

First of all Windows -> Preferences -> General -> Editors -> Text Editors. Second, I have "Displayed tab width" set to 2 and "Insert spaces for tabs" checked, but when I type the Tab key, it inserts a Tab character instead of spaces, and moves the cursor 4 spaces (not 2) to the right. (When I press the cursor back key once it moves back 4 positions on the screen indicating it is a Tab character not 4 spaces - which should be 2 anyway.) Bug?

What I need to do seems to be in Windows -> Preferences -> C/C++ -> Code Style. The K&R profile is selected. Click the Edit button. If I change the tab size from 4 to anything, the OK button gets grayed out.  It seems to want me to create my own custom profile. I didn't try this because it seemed to be excessive pain to go through just to change the damn tab settings. Am I missing something?

4. My OS is Windows XP not 7. My main point is that the installer should say NOT to install it to those locations, and recommend C:\ti or something like that path.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Ed

AartiG,

On item 1: I just discovered that if I make an edit in a smaller module (my program has 9 c and h files), the line number does highlight. My main file is a rather large 19,000 lines. (As it grew I never bothered to break it up). That's probably the problem. I searched around in the Preferences but could not find anything. Previously I did see some warning pop up about the number of lines, but I might have checked the box not to show this again. I'll post if/when I find it, otherwise I'll await your reply. Thanks.

(NOTE: "Enable quick diffs" which has that pale purple color highlight is checked, but that's probably not related to my issue.) (It's interesting that "Show line numbers" checkbox does nothing. Line numbers are always shown.)

2. Windows -> Preferences -> General -> Editors -> Text Editors does seem to be the place to edit the tab properties because when I checked "Show whitespace characters" that does work and show the spaces as a dot and the tab as a small, light gray ">>". Even though I set the tab size to be 2 and to substitute spaces for tabs, it ignores that, even in a small file. Any ideas?

Ed

Took a bit of playing around but I figured out how to replace tabs with spaces.  You need to adjust the coding style settings.

In windows -> Preferences select code style under C/C++

Then click on the new button to create a custom style. Give it a name and the click ok.

Now you can change the property to use spaces instead of tabs.

This works for me.

john

Thanks, John. That also worked for me. That's what I thought might be the solution in my reply to AartiG. As I said I hesitated to try it because it seemed overly complex. CCE does it the way AartiG suggested. CCS is making life more complex, not easier!

Any ideas on item 1, the lack of line number highlighting upon an edit in a large source file?

Thanks,

Ed

 

Edward Schwartz said:

I just discovered that if I make an edit in a smaller module (my program has 9 c and h files), the line number does highlight.

Thanks for the update on this. I'm not sure why it doens't work with the larger file but maybe it had something to do with the warning that was displayed about the number of lines.

For setting the tab width, John just posted the way to do it. It is from  Windows->Preferences, code style under C/C++.

Edward Schwartz said:

My main point is that the installer should say NOT to install it to those locations, and recommend C:\ti or something like that path..

The default installation path in CCS 5.2 should be set to c:\ti. In older versions it was c:\Program Files\Texas Instruments, but is not the case any more.

Ok, I found it (the line number not highlighting on edits of large files. It's in Windows -> Preferences -> C/C++ -> Editor -> Scalability. I changed the number of lines for the alert from the default value of 5,000 to 50,000 and clicked Apply. That, saddly did not do it. So I tried exiting and relaunching CCS, and that did the trick! (Now I can keep the "Alert me..." checkbox checked without the brief nag dialog on startup.)

It looks like all is resloved now. I only wasted a few days on this "upgrade" (all so that my JTAG doesn't complain that I'm trying to load non-A-rev code into an A-rev MSP430 -- it warns but thankfully lets me click "Ignore".)

Thanks all for your help.

Ed

Here are 2 more minor wish-list things I’d like to mention:

1. The Edit -> Find/Replace has changed from CCE so that instead of Find Next (Ctrl-K) ending at the end of the file it wraps around to the beginning of the file with no warning. This is not desirable.  Most editors that wrap around at least stop at the end of the file and give a dialog to the user.

 2. Also with the Find/Replace, it would be very nice if they used the standard F3 to find next (and either F4 (better) or Shift-F3 to find previous). They could keep Ctrl-K and Ctrl-Shift-K for back compatibility.

I hope the developers take note. Thanks.

Ed

 

Edward Schwartz said:

1. The Edit -> Find/Replace has changed from CCE so that instead of Find Next (Ctrl-K) ending at the end of the file it wraps around to the beginning of the file with no warning. This is not desirable.  Most editors that wrap around at least stop at the end of the file and give a dialog to the user.

The Find/Replace box does say that the search has wrapped around but it is not as visible/obvious as one might expect. If you do not wish the search to wrap around, you could also uncheck the "Wrap search" check box.

Edward Schwartz said:

 2. Also with the Find/Replace, it would be very nice if they used the standard F3 to find next (and either F4 (better) or Shift-F3 to find previous). They could keep Ctrl-K and Ctrl-Shift-K for back compatibility.

I'm not sure how much we can change there since we take all of this from stock Eclipse. And it looks like F3 is already being used for something (Open Declaration) by default. If you wish though, you can customize your keyboard shortcuts. The setting is under Window->Preferences->General->Editors->Keys.

AartiG,

1. The Find/Replace does say "Wrapped search" but I was talking about Ctrl-K (without the dialog box) which has no indication (it could/should be on the status line, though).

2. Ah ha. Window->Preferences->General->Editors->Keys does allowing customizing the keys. HOWEVER, CCE also allows ADDING a shortcut (so that Ctrl-K, for example, would still work even after adding, say F10 for Find Next).

Again CCE is better, IMHO, in both cases. Don't you just hate when newer is not better, or the "latest and greatest" is not the "greatest"? -;)

Thanks for your post.

Ed