I had to add Java to machine to allow me to use the Rackspace console to upgrade my cloudserver. So I have Java. I never liked Eclipse, but I like text makefiles even less. So I decided to see if I can use the lesser of two evils. I’m loading Eclipse now. I also loaded EclipseSDCC which is a plugin that should make it easy to use the SDCC toolchain in projects. There is a site at http://www.embeddedcraft.org/free8051.html which I am referring to as well.

So my first problem, some error 13. Googling led me to the conclusion that I need to install the JDK. That seemed to work. I can launch Eclipse.

Now to add the plugin. Just some drag/drop from a ZIP file.

Let’s launch again, shall we….

OK, I’m going to go ahead and do the tutorial just because the last time I tried to use Eclipse it was just an exercise in frustration.

The first part of the tutorial assumed I know what views and perspectives are. I don’t, so I clicked on a link to Views. But how to go back? There is no back button. … Or is there. Above the text, I see the tops of some itty bitty buttons. One looks like the of an arrow pointing left. I click it. It goes back. Eclipse Help doesn’t render properly on my Windows 10 Surface Pro 3. Grrr… Did I mention that Eclipse was an exercise in frustration?

Did I jump ahead in the tutorial? It doesn’t work.  OK, I tried to run the program from the GIUT command line and the command line tells me cygwin1.dll and cygstdc__-6.dll are missing from my computer. Cygwin Bash runs it fine. So I guess it’s a PATH thing. I won’t be debugging my Z-80 code in Eclipse anyway.

I’m tired of the tutorial. So I’ll just see if I can do a Z-80 project…. I can see the MCS-51 project under Others… I expect to see. Hopefully I can convert it to a Z80 project. Also, there is a toolchain under C, but not under C++.

And, I get “Project cannot be created” “Reason:” “Internal Error:”, and when I click details “java.lang.NullPointerException”. One solution was to copy the “os” folder from one file to another, but that didn’t work. I suppose I could install a 32 bit version of Eclipse….

Did I mention that Eclipse is an exercise in frustration? Makefiles are starting to look pretty nice about now…..