Troubles with Segger Embedded Studio for nRF Connect

[bojan]

Dear Sirs,

I am on v1.2.0 tag of the nRF Connect SDK, playing with both nRF9160-DK and Thingy:91 boards.

I have very hard time with Segger Embedded Studio (SES) for nRF Connect! Both 4.30 and 4.42 versions and both X86 and X64 variants are so buggy!

Here are some the most annoying issues:

1) When I start the program with double-clicking bin/emStudio, there is a problem with indexing the project. SES is simply freezing here:

What I need to do in order to start working with SES is to stop this index task:

However, I am unable to move through the code with Find References because the solution is not properly indexed. Pre-processor comminds (e.g. #ifdef) are not recognized as well.

2) Very often I can't download the code to device with Build -> Build and Run option. In that case, I only build with SES and download the code with nRF Programmer tool.

3) I can't debug the designs with Debug -> Go option starting from the tag v1.2.0

Is it something wrong with my machine (it is few months old, by the way), do I need to install/uninstall something to help SES working better?

Is there anything else I need to do in order to have better working environment?

Finally, is there any plan on your side to release some more stable SES version soon?

Thanks in advance for your time and efforts.

Sincerely,

Bojan.

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi Bojan,

 

Thank you very much for reporting issues back to us, in such a in-depth and detailed manner. We recognize that we have issues with SES (Nordic Edition), and I apologize for the inconvenience.

I can assure you that we are working on improving the scenario.

When I start the program with double-clicking bin/emStudio, there is a problem with indexing the project. SES is simply freezing here:

This is unfortunately a known issue. You have to wait for the indexing to finish before starting a build. If you have started a build, you can abort it by going to "Build -> Cancel Build".

 

Very often I can't download the code to device with Build -> Build and Run option. In that case, I only build with SES and download the code with nRF Programmer tool.

 This is a newly introduced bug, where it seems to have issues with the RAMCode algorithm. We have noticed that if you erase the board first, then program (or enter debug mode), it should succeed. We are investigating this with Segger.

 

I can't debug the designs with Debug -> Go option starting from the tag v1.2.0

This is a side-effect of the former issue, unfortunately. If you erase the device first ("nrfjprog -e" in command line), then press "F5" (enter debug mode), it should enter it successfully.

There is however another known issue here, which was introduced with the multi-image debug (it selects secure part by default now), which is that the ordering of .elf files needs to be changed in the project settings, to look like this in order to run the application .elf:

  

Finally, is there any plan on your side to release some more stable SES version soon?

My apologies for the inconvenience these issues are causing. We are working on improving the overall quality of SES (Nordic Edition).

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[Yusuke]

asset_tracker has this path; $(ProjectDir)/mcuboot/zephyr/zephyr.elf

However, other projects like at_client or gps don't.

How do you debug them?

[Yusuke]

now it's working by adding these lines to prj.conf

# MCUBOOT
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y

# SEGGER RTT
CONFIG_PRINTK=y
CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_STDOUT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y

[Håkon Alseth]

Hi,

 

You can reorder the .elf's in a spm + application project, like this:

 

Kind regards,

Håkon

[Yusuke]

yea, that works out too.