[cmake-developers] Fwd: Creating a Keil uVision generator

[Marco Schuler]

From: Marco Schuler <marco.schuler at gmail.com>
Date: 2017-01-12 11:16 GMT+01:00
Subject: Re: [cmake-developers] Creating a Keil uVision generator
To: Paul Wilkinson <paul.wilkinson at cmedrobotics.com>


Hi all

2017-01-03 0:27 GMT+01:00 Paul Wilkinson <paul.wilkinson at cmedrobotics.com>:

> Hi all,
>
> I am involved in a software project targeting a handful of ARM Cortex-M
> microcontrollers. We develop the software using the Keil uVision v5 IDE
> [1]. We
> are considering whether CMake could help us with some of the limitations we
> encounter using uVision alone.


Same here. Lots of different boards and applications with shared code. It
is a nightmare to manage all the configurations in uVision!

I was thinking and investigating for a uVision generator some time ago
already. I was also talking to the people from Keil at the embedded world
congress about it. They did not like an approach using a template project
that would be filled in with contents derived from CMake. There approach
would be to generate a project-import file (xml) that can be imported with
uVision using the -i option (see http://www.keil.com/
support/man/docs/uv4/uv4_commandline.htm). The format of such a file is
specified in "C:\Keil_v5\UV4\project_import.xsd".

The problem with such an import is that the available options are not
sufficient for most cases.


> Does anyone have experience or insight in to creating a CMake generator
> for an
> embedded systems IDE like uVision?
>
> Read on for some technical details.
>
> A uVision project's structure appears _roughly_ similar to a Microsoft
> Visual
> Studio 12 project. uVision has a Multi-Project Workspace (.uvmpw) rather
> than a
> VS solution (.sln), and a uVision Project (.uvprojx) instead of a VS
> project
> (.vcxproj).


While looking at the directory that contains the project_import.xsd, I
struggled over the following files:

- project_optx.xsd
- project_mpw.xsd
- project_proj.xsd
- project_opt.xsd
- project_projx.xsd

Here, all the possible options for project-/opt-/uvmpw-files are defined.
Maybe these could be a starting-point for a uVision generator.


>
>

> Some of the benefits I would imagine we would get from such a generator:
>
> - more human-friendly and diff-friendly project files (CMakeLists.txt
> instead
>   of .uvprojx)
>
> - avoiding a combinatorial explosion of configurations by using the CMake
>   language and its cache variables.
>

I fully agree to these points!

--
Cheers!
 Marco

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