Really, really nice

Just a quick one today.

After my previous qemu post, I found this really cool article on how to debug the linux kernel itself running on the emulator. It even uses Eclipse CDT so you have a nice IDE while debugging the kernel code.

Great stuff...

Read...+ Write?

In a previous post I mentioned the possibilities opened up by having access to a C/C++ project's DOM AST within Eclipse. Now there's a new bugzilla in CDT to work on making this AST writable. Aside from the obvious benefit (aka "refactoring"), I can imagine a whole new bunch of neat features that can be made possible by this work: more intelligent C/C++ code generation, quick fix, among others.

Eclipse CDT is becoming more and more like the excellent JDT in terms of features and API, and this is great news for us C/C++ developers and Eclipse plug-in developers alike.

What's out and about, Nov. 29 2007

Hidden under the myriad of Android docs is a gem for anyone writing embedded Java applications: Writing Efficient Android Code.

While some of the concepts there presented would make many a software architect/OO practitioner cringe (Prefer Virtual Over Interface?), the writer is careful enough to advise when (or when not) to do something.

And speaking of gems, I found another presentation that describes how you can use Eclipse CDT to introspect C source code a la DOM. It even describes how the Eclipse Parallel Tools Platform (PTP) project used it to implement some neat features such as barrier analysis, call graph, and identifying potential deadlocks. Pretty exciting for me... having a DOM AST available opens up a lot of possibilities. Think code metrics, static code analysis, visualization, refactoring, etc. integrated into the same IDE in which you write the code.