CCS: Badly need CCS7 user manual

Hi,

I am very sorry to hear about the troubles you are having. Unfortunately a comprehensive User's Manual/User's Guide was never commissioned, where one of the reasons is the fact customers tend to prefer device-oriented step-by-step guides.

Another detail that was severely changed (and you probably noticed) is the delivery of Software Development Kits (SDKs): this is done now via the online Resource Explorer, something that was launched in the latest incarnations of CCSv6.x but was only fully developed starting with CCSv7. The Getting Started video explains this and covers the basics to understand this procedure.

CCSv7 training resources are also mainly available at the online Resource Explorer. The main CCS Training page shows the location of the Training material on the Resource Explorer tree.

At last, the closest to User's manuals are:

http://software-dl.ti.com/ccs/esd/documents/users_guide/sdto_ccs_build-handbook.html

 http://software-dl.ti.com/ccs/esd/documents/users_guide/sdto_ccs_debug-handbook.html

(both are also available at the online Resource Explorer)

We also have a Youtube channel with lots of resources and tips to make the best usage of CCS.

Regarding the autoformatting settings, we inherit them from the Eclipse/CDT codebase and changes may happen without our control.

At any rate, please feel free to ask us the issues you are getting along the way.

I apologize for the inconvenience,

Rafael

I had already found those very scant resources.  I have no issues withe the device(s) so device-oriented step-by-step guides are sort of pointless.

I've been building code no problem there for the most part (I guess we all have some problems ;-} ).  It's the CCS tool itself I need documentation for.  Even an up-=to-date help file would be better than what we have now.

How do we search videos?  I see no point to a video.

We all just want to do our work.  We want tools that help not get in the way.  We don't have time to waste fighting the tools and watching videos.  We need documentation for the tool we can access instantly and search (by way of table of contents, index and search function) for the information to use the tool.  This forum and video only approach is a complete disrespect for all of our time...

The YouTube channel allows for searching.  It will search the description of the videos so if there is a video that covers what you are interested in the search should find it.  Use the search in the red box below to search within the channel (the one at the top searches all of YouTube).  If we have a number of people asking the same question we will often create a video for it.

It seems like the main issue is trying to find the option or preferences for a particular feature.  The Preferences dialog has a search feature.  Below I have typed format into the search box and it shows me the options for the formatter.  The main trick with this is entering the correct search term.  However that exact same problem will exist when searching the Help.  I prefer to search the Preferences as it is much quicker than searching the help and then going and finding what the help described in the preferences.  One tip for doing this is to click the link at the bottom to show advanced settings.  This way the full set of options will be searched.

Regards,

John

Sure I can search _for_ a video but I can't search the contents.... I've got to waste time sitting through a video that my ADD brain will likely have tuned out about half a minute into it and even if it doesn't there's a great chance that what I'm looking for won't be in there - terrible waste of our time!!!

The tip on the advanced settings and search box are good though - I found the formatter settings. Still doesn't undo what it did. I needed a block indented so I ran it and while it indented the portion I needed indented I didn't find the rest of the mess it made until after a lot of code editing so I'm still stuck with having to go through the entire code to fix the mess it made. I'm pretty gun shy about every using the formatter again.

I'm just giving up. If I can't resolve a problem with CCS (not my code or the device, the tool) I'm moving on instead of wasting time and getting frustrated by the very poor attitude towards documenting a less than simple tool...

We are doing our best to try to help you leverage the resources that are available to you today.  

As far as searching videos.  Many of our videos are what we call quick tips.  These are 2 minute videos that quickly show how to do something.  Using the text search on the channel will search the descriptions of the video (which describes the content) and return videos that match.  There may not be a video on what you are looking for but doing a quick search will check.

In the case of your formatter issue one thing that can help is the Local history.  Most people use a source revision control system, but that only helps you recover if you have done a check-in/commit.  The local history keeps track of differences between regular file saves.

You can then choose to merge specific changes back.

For example below I have selected the main_tirtos.c file in the Project Explorer then from the context menu selected Compare With -> Local History.  That opens the little view on the far right that shows the various saves of my file.  I have selected the one from 11:40am today.  It then opens the larger view in the middle of my screen that shows my current version of the file on the left and the version from the local history on the right.  I can then choose to revert specific changes (or all of them) by using the buttons near the top of the view.  Currently I have a change selected that was done by the formatter and I can undo just this change, so that I don't lose other code changes that I have made.  This tool can be quite useful.  However if the formatting was done on quite a large source file it could be a pain to go through all of the changes.

One last plug for the video search.  If you search for undo or changes this video shows up at the top of the list.  The search is entirely dependent on the quality of the description provided but we try to make it as relevant as possible.

I could *not* get the formatter to stop breaking lines into nonsense (e.g. we leave a single "for" statement on the same line) so I just cut & paste into codeblocks, format there (I can get it to format anyway I want), cut and paste back..... done.... workaround but done....

It's very hard to understand the pushing videos instead of spending the time that is wasted making videos to waste engineers' time (that all know how to read user manuals!) instead of documenting like every experienced engineer knows the value of. Seems exceedingly lazy...

I don't even watch TV! I will not waste my time watching videos hoping that pertinent information *might* be in them and frankly I am quite insulted that you all think my time is so low value. Give us proper documentation to *READ* and *SEARCH*!!!!


Searchable manuals are far more efficient references than videos. End of story. Not fake news.


I'm done wasting my breath here. I don't want to hear one more thing about videos! They are completely worthless to me... CCS isn't really doing what I want but I'm figuring out the workarounds for now.... After this product TI will be the last place I look for processors until you all come around (if ever) and decide to put down your smart phone cameras and do the real engineering task of documenting your tool...

Take care...