1027 - LatticeMico32: When I launch LatticeMico32 System Builder I'm asked to provide a location for the <i>workspace</i>. What is the <i>workspace</i> and how do I use it in Mico System Builder?
Description:
The LatticeMico32 microprocessor development environment is based on the industry standard Eclipse Integrated Development Environment. The Eclipse development environment creates and uses a workspace file.
The workspace is a source of some confusion for early users of the Eclipse environment and, therefore, the LatticeMico32 tools.
Several questions arise for designers who are using the tool for the first time:
- What is the workspace?
- Where should I place the workspace?
- How does the workspace relate to my FPGA and C/C++ code?
- What information does the workspace contain?
The Eclipse workspace, very simply, holds the configuration settings associated with the Eclipse Integrated Development environment. The workspace has no relationship to the FPGA's ispLever project. The kinds of information the workspace retains consist of things such as:
- The last LatticeMico32 platform you were using
- The C/C++ project directories you were using
- How the debugger environment will appear
- etc...
For Microsoft Windows the {$HOMEDRIVE $HOMEPATH} environment variable is used to store the Eclipse workspace. For Linux users the $HOME (typically ~/) directory is used to store the Eclipse workspace.
How you work with the Eclipse workspace is a matter of personal preference. One advantage to always using the same workspace is that changes in the environment settings are in effect for all Eclipse sessions. Using independent workspaces require re-entry of favorite settings for each workspace.
The advantage of the independent workspace is the C/C++ source code perspective only has the projects related to the current LatticeMico32 platform. A global workspace very quickly acquires a laundry list of C/C++ source code directories that become hard to maintain.
A personal decision must be made as to how you want to interact with the Eclipse environment.
Caution: Make sure the workspace resides in a directory structure independent of your LatticeMico32 project structure!
To use a new workspace use the File->Switch Workspace menu.