[resolved] I need an IDE for my development

[kolban]

My experience has been very mixed. Prior to a859564.zip I couldn't get very far at all. Since then I've made more progress but have taken steps backwards too. My gut is telling me that there are multiple state machines and timing considerations at play here and without understanding all of those, we get different results most times we use it.

Ive seen a test put me in the debugger once and then never manage to get me in the debugger again. If I shutdown openocd, shutdown gdb and reboot the ESP32, miraculously it starts to work again. The permutations are too numerous for me to see any patterns and I'm afraid I've no skills to attempt to assist with the JTAG technology.

For example, if I have openocd running, is it allowable to re-flash the ESP32 with a new binary version? Do I have to cleanly shutdown gdb before shutting down openocd? If the ESP32 crashes (remember ... if I am using JTAG its because of bad results) does that "break" the interaction state between openocd, gdb and the ESP32 or I can I simply reboot my ESP32 and try again?

There are so many more questions than answers.

In addition, and this is just loose thinking on my part, in the heat of battle ... while chasing a bug ... one doesn't really want to go on a side trip trying to debug JTAG.

[mikemoy]

Other options to add to the pot...

When I first started down the ESP32 path, I used visualgdb plugin for Visual Studio. I used the OLIMEX JTAG device to program and debug.
Here are the links for those. They worked great together.

https://visualgdb.com/tutorials/esp32/esp-idf/
https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/JTAG/ARM-USB-OCD-H/

Though now I use Visual Studio Code, and no debugger. Never came across an issue that i had to use a debugger when a simple printf has always done the job for me.

[EricDevB]

Thanks for the replies. For debugging code, I saw a post by Kolban about a simulator from about a year ago, but it looks like that has not progressed yet. There is always printf's, but that does not let you step through code. So, if we want to be able to debug the C code I am glad to hear that mikemoy has had success using the Olimex JTAG device. It is great to hear that it worked, as the JTAG included with the ESP-Rover-Kit board does not seem to work well enough to actually use for development.

If anyone has had success using JTAG on the ESP-Rover-Kit please let us know. It would be great to hear from the developers at Esspresif if we are missing something, and they are using it internally, or there is something in the setup that we missed, or, we just need to wait until the kinks get worked out with the built in JTAG.

For now, I passed on the JTAG, and was able to work through my issue.

[perimeno]

Hi guys, those who prefer to use QT Creator, I was able to debug my ES32-WROOM via JTAG. https://laszlovitez.com/2020/03/15/debu ... t-creator/