Microsoft Takes VS 2022 Embedded Tools (C++) to VS Code -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Takes VS 2022 Embedded Tools (C++) to VS Code

By David Ramel
03/10/2022

Microsoft's C++ dev team announced that an Embedded Tools extension introduced to Visual Studio 2022 last year is now available for Visual Studio Code as a preview.

The Embedded Tools extension now has 50 installs after being introduced yesterday (March 9), with the VS Code Marketplace description saying it lets developers view registers and Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) data when debugging embedded devices. Specifically, it provides a register viewer for CMSIS-SVD files, along with an RTOS data viewer with support for Azure RTOS and FreeRTOS.

The same functionality was injected into a VS 2022 preview last December, when Microsoft explained that the extension is used in conjunction with new vcpkg artifact capabilities to quickly bootstrap an embedded development machine and get started with actual coding. Those capabilities center around vcpkg, Microsoft's cross-platform open source package manager.

Microsoft defines an artifact as a set of packages required for a working development environment, listing compilers, linkers, debuggers, build systems and platform SDKs as examples of relevant packages.

**[Click on image for larger view.]** The Example Azure RTOS ThreadX Project *(source: Microsoft).*

The company's March 10 announcement post explains using vcpkg from a PowerShell prompt to activate an embedded development environment for an example Azure RTOS ThreadX project (pictured above), but any shell can be used. It demonstrates functionality around: code navigation and IntelliSense; building, deploying and debugging on hardware; working with peripheral registers and RTOS object views; and more.

"We hope that these new capabilities will enable you to choose VS Code for your embedded development needs and make you more productive," Microsoft said. "We are very interested in your feedback to continue to improve this experience. The comments below are open, or you can find us on Twitter (@VisualC), or via email at [email protected]."

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.
Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.
VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.
Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

"Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."
Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.