NotesOnEclipse

Random notes on my eclipse related development.

Extending CDT to add macros/includes from a custom build

Aim is to programmatically set macro definitions, include paths and possibly compiler settings from a build system, usually based on make.

A concrete example is the Android source tree build system.

My usual eclipse setup for android is:

• add the git repositories using EGit
• import each repository as a CDT Makefile project
• build from command line using the usual android lunch/make

This allows me to have EGit working on the source code (which would not be the case if I would import the whole tree as a single project) to browse history, branch, etc...

Now, the downside is that CDT does not know anything about include paths, defines so that the indexer can not resolve properly includes and #if...#endif sections.

Built-in GCC parser

CDT has a built-in GCC parser that can infer the options from the make output, if the compile commands are printed (for android this can be done by giving an additional showcommands target on make).

This also means the build has to be performed from within eclipse, but eclipse builds each project separately.

Needs to be investigated more

Extension Point: org.eclipse.cdt.core.externalSettingsProvider

This extension point allows to define a provider that can contribute macros and include paths to the configuration, but seems to operate at project level only.

Needs to be investigated more.