nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

Amanda Hsieh — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 07:18:25 GMT

Hi,

Enable debug options adds CONFIG_DEBUG_OPTIMIZATIONS=y and CONFIG_OPENOCD_SUPPORT=y to the build command line. It does not modify any project files. These options set -Og optimization level and add thread info structures required for debugger thread awareness, respectively.

Generate configuration does not generate prj.conf file. It generates a CMake build system. Please refer to NCS/Zephyr documentation for details on the build process.

We recommend to leave it unchecked for blinky due to a bug in the build system and debug server that is causing the debugger to halt on stray debug symbols.

-Amanda

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

spekary — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 16:19:18 GMT

Where do you see that? Under Building an application, step 2 is selecting the Debug features, but the application is not built until later in the process.

Your intro video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGsZJpdLtco&list=PLx_tBuQ_KSqEt7NK-H7Lu78lT2OijwIMl&index=5&t=39s at 0:22 shows two lines to add to the proj.cnf file to enable debugging. When I try what the video suggests, it appears to have no actual affect on anything, and the "Enable debug options" on the Generate Configuration screen on the page you mention above does not appear to add any debug options to the configuration file.

So again, what does the "Enable debug options" checkbox actually do? Also, since this is a "Generate configuration" screen, does it only generate a proj.cnf file, or are there other configuration files it affects?

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

Amanda Hsieh — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 10:54:05 GMT

Hi,

See https://nordicplayground.github.io/vscode-nrf-connect/#creating-an-application

Enable debug options: Debugging features are enabled after the application is built.

-Amanda

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

spekary — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:41:10 GMT

Speaking of that, yes I had "enable debugging" checked when I created the project.

I could not find any documentation on what that actually does. Is there something that describes what the results of that checkbox is?

The video tutorial said that if I did not check that, I can add some rather specific debug options to the prj.conf file to get debugging to work. I expected to see those as a result of checking the box, but that wasn't the case.

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

Amanda Hsieh — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 06:49:37 GMT

Hi,

Did you have "Enable debug options" selected when generating the build configuration? Please try to generate the build configuration with this option unchecked. There seems to be an issue when having this option selected with samples that do not use threads. See Einar's comment here and VS Code team's comment here for more information.

Best regards,
Amanda

RE: nRF Connect blinky sample hard to debug

Amanda Hsieh — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 11:47:45 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback. I have reported to the internal.

Regards,
Amanda