Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

dougw — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 07:31:02 GMT

Some good tips here...

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

garfius — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 12:14:50 GMT

Just compiled updated version of picoprobe.uf2

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

Jan Cumps — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 12:12:29 GMT

I got this to work!

2 comments:

there's a typo: cortex-debg.openocdPath should be cortex-debug.openocdPath
I had to add this entry in launch.json, because the toolkit and debugger couldn't find objdump

"objdumpPath": "arm-none-eabi-objdump",

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

gautombose — Wed, 25 May 2022 18:56:18 GMT

This version of openocd does not work with Windows10 32 bit version.

Is it possible to have a version of openocd compiled for 32bit windows 10 please.

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

Fred27 — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 07:35:32 GMT

I've just taken another look at the Pico after months of not touching it. Unfortunately my installation seems to have broken itself whilst unattended, so I'm working through things again.

OK - I may have upgraded to Windows 11 beta in the meantime, but everything else still works!

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

sdt — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 04:44:58 GMT

Fred,

Great tutorial - Got up to the part where VSCode was being configured... It seems to want to work, but I'm getting the following message when I actually try to debug:

Failed to launch OpenOCD GDB Server: Timeout

The output console looks normal:

Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0+dev-g14c0d0d-dirty (2021-01-27-15:43)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
http://openocd.org/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
Info : only one transport option; autoselect 'swd'
Warn : Transport "swd" was already selected
adapter speed: 5000 kHz

Info : Hardware thread awareness created
Info : Hardware thread awareness created
Info : RP2040 Flash Bank Command
Info : Listening on port 50001 for tcl connections
Info : Listening on port 50002 for telnet connections
Info : clock speed 5000 kHz

The Debug Console displays the following message:

Please check OUTPUT tab (Adapter Output) for output from C:\VSARM\sdk\pico\openocd_picoprobe\openocd.exe
Launching server: "C:\VSARM\sdk\pico\openocd_picoprobe\openocd.exe" "-c" "gdb_port 50000" "-c" "tcl_port 50001" "-c" "telnet_port 50002" "-s" "C:/VSARM/sdk/pico/openocd_picoprobe/tcl/" "-f" "interface/picoprobe.cfg" "-f" "target/rp2040.cfg"

The 2 .json files were modified as per your examples (obviously with the paths changed), and running openocd and the debugger manually in command prompts works fine.

Have you seen this error message and do you have any idea what the problem might be?

Thanks for your help.

Steve

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

maxpowerr — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 13:18:30 GMT

Good article. But unfortunately I cannot find the Raspberry Pico on sale.

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

phil.newman — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:09:22 GMT

Thanks for the guide. It was super useful and easy to follow - I was up and running in no time.

A couple notes/questions:

Even after adding the nmake env variable i can't build from a 'normal' vs code instance. I get build errors such as: "fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'cstdio': No such file or directory" and "NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'C:\PROGRA~2\MIB055~1\2019\BuildTools\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.28.29333\bin\Hostx86\x86\cl.exe' : return code '0x2'". I've not spent much time investigating however, and it's only a minor inconvenience.
Were you able to get stdout (printf) redirected to the vs code console? I still have to run putty to see my friendly debug lines.

Thanks again for article.

Phil

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

mengrie — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 12:41:28 GMT

Hi Fred,

Thx to your extended research I got my Pico Debugging setup almost working. Based on the Pico C/C++ documention I was not abled to get everything working. Escpailly the OpenOCD stuff.
Based on this your writing above, I got to the point where I can build all but when openocd starts like this

Launching server: "H:\Electronica\MicroControllers\Pico\OpenOCD" "-c" "gdb_port 50000" "-s" "H:\Electronica\MicroControllers\Pico\OpenOCD\tcl" "-f" "/interface/picoprobe.cfg" "-f" "/target/rp2040.cfg", I get an error telling me "Failed to launch OpenOCD GDB server: Error: spawn H:\Electronica\MicroControllers\Pico\OpenOCD ENOENT. I checked double-checked and recheched all but found no discrepancy against your settings.
Did you can across this one? If yes, any clue where I need to look or make changes?
Note: running arm-none-eabi-gdb test.elf from the VSC Dev command prompt in the directory where test.elf resides does work and give me this output

H:\Electronica\MicroControllers\Pico\Projects\C\test\build>arm-none-eabi-gdb test.elf

D:\Portable\gcc-arm\bin\arm-none-eabi-gdb.exe: warning: Couldn't determine a path for the index cache directory.

GNU gdb (GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain 10-2020-q4-major) 10.1.90.20201028-git

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details.

This GDB was configured as "--host=i686-w64-mingw32 --target=arm-none-eabi".

Type "show configuration" for configuration details.

For bug reporting instructions, please see:

<https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.

Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:

<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/>.

For help, type "help".

Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...

Reading symbols from test.elf...

(gdb)

Thx in advance for whatever suggestion to get this solved abd running

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

majbthrd — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 02:05:38 GMT

Fred, FYI: if you had used pico-debug ( https://github.com/majbthrd/pico-debug/ ), you would not have needed multiple pico boards. Providing you are not developing RP2040 code that uses USB, you can use the same OpenOCD + Visual Studio tools that you describe in your tutorial, but do away with needing multiple RP2040, picoprobe, jumpers, etc., etc. As soon as the RP2040 was announced, I saw an opportunity for the RP2040 to debug itself, and pico-debug was the result.

Looking over your tutorial, the simplifications would be:

1) no need to use Zadig (CMSIS-DAP is HID, which doesn't require special drivers)

2) the newer openocd and pico-sdk linked in the pico-debug "howto" subdirectory are needed

3) the openocd invocation earlier in the tutorial would instead be: openocd -f interface/cmsis-dap.cfg -c "transport select swd" -c "adapter speed 4000" -f target/rp2040-core0.cfg

4) in launch.json, replace:

"configFiles": [

"/interface/picoprobe.cfg",

"/target/rp2040.cfg"

with:

"configFiles": [

"interface/cmsis-dap.cfg",

"target/rp2040-core0.cfg"

"openOCDLaunchCommands": [

"transport select swd",

"adapter speed 4000"

Cheers.

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

shabaz — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 23:56:20 GMT

Hi Fred,

Very useful post! This is extremely helpful to get people out of holes when everything is going wrong in code : ) Also, great info on how to do the reset.. it seems like almost a mandatory mod for anyone wanting to do lots of development/experimentation with the Pico.

For anyone unfamiliar with GDB, It's definitely worth spending time exploring it, because although it can seem scary/obscure at first, it can really save the day when all is going haywire. It's good to get the familiarity with how the stack trace works, having debug symbols within the built code, even learning to compare the memory with assembler output etc.. Although it's good to eventually have higher-level debug like console in a more stable system, sometimes GDB is essential.

A few times things got so desperate I'd deliberately fill memory with known stuff and then see if content got overwritten when it shouldn't have. A variant of that is an orthodox method too - some systems deliberately surround variables with magic bytes, so that if they get trampled, then it can be detected..

Having GDB also opens up some interesting possibilities, like having the code writing debug to RAM.. like a simplified version of printf almost, for the times where very high speed logging is needed, perhaps to a circular buffer, to be readable in the event of (say) a crash where you want to see the previous few seconds or milliseconds of history, to examine where it all went wrong. Some of these are just ideas for an 'extreme situation' way out! : )

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

ralphjy — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 22:10:01 GMT

Thanks for the great tutorial. Can't wait to try this stuff out.

Just got my Picos off the reel [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b252d5f8-0118-4fe7-a98e-c5d7551e5eaf/5023.contentimage_5F00_938.png:16:16].

[View:/resized-image/__size/215x350/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b252d5f8-0118-4fe7-a98e-c5d7551e5eaf/1033.contentimage_5F00_207448.jpg:215:350]

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

neilk — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 21:56:31 GMT

Great tutorial, Fred.

Despite what I said before, I did understand most of it!! However, it will be a while before I try and implement it!

Thanks

Neil

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

feiticeir0 — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 20:51:13 GMT

Excellent tutorial.

Although I don't use Windows (but use Visual Studio Code), I thing what you did will help a lot of people and who knows, someday I might use it ! [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b252d5f8-0118-4fe7-a98e-c5d7551e5eaf/contentimage_5F00_2516.png:16:16]

Thank you

RE: Debugging the Raspberry Pi Pico on Windows 10

DAB — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 20:20:33 GMT

Very useful post.

DAB