© 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 | March 13 th, 2008 | ON Semiconductor From the Horse’s Mouth What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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%) All (13%) None (8%) Some (33%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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 Extremely Satisfied (24%) Somewhat Satisfied (9%) Somewhat Dissatisfied (0%) Extremely Dissatisfied (0%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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 ([resources] Better project organization) Is this really a platform issue or a build setup issue?

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 Summary 65% of respondents think our Eclipse-based product is somewhat better, or better by far than 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. Better By Far (10%) No Better / No Worse (25%) Slightly Worse (10%) Far Worse (0%)

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 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?

From the Horse’s Mouth: What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools © 2008 by Mark Melvin; made available under the EPL v1.0 Questions?