MSP-GCC in VS code

VS code is one of the most used IDEs and configuring it to program a msp430 was easier as I expected. So let start blink a led from from vs code.

• Take any blink.c either from the net or from our older posts and copy it to you working folder.
• Configure the c/c++, so mainly it has to find your msp gcc compiler. This is an example configuration:

{
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Linux",
            "includePath": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/**"
            ],
            "defines": [],
            "compilerPath": "/opt/msp430-gcc/bin/msp430-elf-gcc",
            "cStandard": "c17",
            "cppStandard": "gnu++17",
            "intelliSenseMode": "linux-gcc-x64",
            "configurationProvider": "ms-vscode.cmake-tools"
        }
    ],
    "version": 4
}

• Test it by trying to find the definition of a symbol.
• Let’s build the blinker using cmake For this we need following files
• CMakePresets.json

{
    "version": 8,
    "configurePresets": [
        {
            "name": "msp430preset",
            "displayName": "Configure preset using toolchain file",
            "description": "Sets Ninja generator, build and install directory",
            
            "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/out/build/${presetName}",
            "cacheVariables": {
                "CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE": "Debug",
                "CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE": "${sourceDir}/msp430-gcc.cmake",
                "CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX": "${sourceDir}/out/install/${presetName}"
            }
        }
    ]
}

• toolchain.cmake

set(MSP430_MCU "msp430f5438a")
set(MSP430_CFLAGS "")
set(MSP430_LFLAGS "")
#let cmake find our compiler
find_program(MSP430-ELF-GCC msp430-elf-gcc)
#set it
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER ${MSP430-ELF-GCC})

function(msp430_add_executable EXECUTABLE)
	set(EXECUTABLE_ELF "${EXECUTABLE}.elf")

	# main target for the executable depends of elf
	add_custom_target(${EXECUTABLE} ALL DEPENDS ${EXECUTABLE_ELF})

	# compile and link elf file
	add_executable(${EXECUTABLE_ELF} ${ARGN})
	set_target_properties(${EXECUTABLE_ELF} PROPERTIES 
		COMPILE_FLAGS "-mmcu=${MSP430_MCU}")
	
	
endfunction(msp430_add_executable)

• CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.19)
message("Building blinker...")
project(blinker C)
msp430_add_executable(blinker blink.c)

and that is it… for now. Next step we need to ship the elf to the mcu 😉