How to set up GCC and Eclipse for development on the beacon kit

[wim]

Hi,

I am looking to select a bluetooth chip for a new project, one of the criteria is access to free development tools. I see that in the SDK GCC is supported. But: how do I set this up? Is there some guidelines or user manual? And what is this soft device? Is there a step by step tutorial or something to get started? I would like to start off from the beacon example, and from there on add things, like communication to an SPI device from the microcontroller.

Any help is very welcome, find it very difficult to find an entry point...

[Vidar Berg]

Hi, you may want to have a look at this blog post here for development with GCC and Eclipse. I used Eclipse Luna in this example, but recommend using Kepler instead as there's currently a minor bug in Luna CDT.

Bug description: "The debugger buttons are disabled If you upgraded to Eclipse Luna 4.4, and you notice that the debugger buttons are not available (in fact the buttons are still there, but are greyed/disabled), you are facing a Luna CDT bug. The workaround is to quit Eclipse and to retry." link

Here's a post on getting started with bluetooth development: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../