TCF/Raspberry Pi

Getting TCF to run on the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, cheap single-board computer that is powerful enough to play HD video. It runs Linux on its ARMv6 chip, connects a monitor and a keyboard for stand-alone work, and provides all the necessary tools to get started quickly. TCF needs a network, so the instructions here are for a "Type B" Raspberry Pi which should cost around 25 $. Getting it up and running is quick and easy:

Building the TCF Agent

Getting TCF up and running is really easy if your Pi has a network - this shouldn't take more than 15 minutes depending on your network connection for the downloads:

1. Prepare an SD Card (4 GB recommended) with the Raspbian Image to boot your device. We used "wheezy" for this.
2. Connect native monitor and keyboard. Finish setup wizard, type “ifconfig”. Read IP address from eth0.
   • If you can't get a monitor and a keyboard, you can use a tool like the advanced IP scanner

Now you're ready to rock and roll on the keyboard

  # (Replace n.n.n.n by the actual IP address that you read)
  ssh pi@n.n.n.n / password : raspberry
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install git make gcc uuid-dev libssl-dev libc6-dbg
  git clone https://git.eclipse.org/r/tcf/org.eclipse.tcf.agent.git
  cd org.eclipse.tcf.agent/agent
  make
  obj/GNU/Linux/arm/Debug/agent -L- -l0

The last command actually launches the agent, for testing.

Installing the Agent for auto-start

One benefit of running TCF on the device is the TCF auto-discovery: It allows to connect to a headless device (without keyboard and monitor) quickly even without knowing its IP address. For that to work right after powering on the device, you'll need to register the TCF agent for auto-start:

  cd org.eclipse.tcf.agent/agent
  make install
  # Review the files installed into /tmp
  sudo make install INSTALLROOT=
  sudo update-rc.d tcf-agent defaults
  sudo update-rc.d tcf-agent enable
  sudo service tcf-agent start

Connecting the TCF Debugger to the Pi

1. Get Eclipse, it is recommended to use the Eclipse IDE installer package
2. Launch it, choose Help > Install New Software and install the most recent version from the releases:
   • https://download.eclipse.org/tools/tcf/releases/1.7/1.7.0/
   • You can safely install all of TCF (will also get you the sources)
3. Allow to restart, then switch to the Target Explorer Perspective
   • Your Pi should show up under "Neighborhood". Here, you can also set up a new remote debug configuration.

Advanced Configuration

VNC

You can install a VNC server on the Pi - the TCF source repository on git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/tcf/org.eclipse.tcf.git has an experimental VNC integration:

  sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

There's more details on this Blog on setting up VNC on the Pi.

NFS

You can install an NFS server on the Pi - provides access to source code and debug objects that you compile right on the Pi:

  # purge rpcbind and nfs-common to avoid [warn] Not starting: portmapper is not running ... (warning).
  sudo apt-get purge rpcbind
  sudo apt-get purge nfs-common
  sudo apt-get install rpcbind
  sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common
  
  sudo nano /etc/exports
  #  add the following line :
  #  /  *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,insecure)
  
  #restart your nfs deamon
  /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart