First steps in the "Testers" section.

Hi everybody.

I'm creating this section to centralize everything about testing the simulator.

Still nothing well defined, but here, testers should have access to development versions, report issues, discuss about issues found and any other thing needed.

If you have some ideas / suggestions, feell free to comment here.

Thank you very much for your collaboration.

There are a fewof things I would like to be able to do with respect to the code editor:

1) Allow the editor to recognise ".c" and ".cpp" as valid formats as well as ".ino".
2) Allow the editor/build to include multi-file based programs. The arduino IDE/tools supports this.
3) Allow use of alternative build tools - e.g. the official avr-gcc tools released by Atmel/Microchip (not Atmel studio ones).

I know 3 could be a big change but perhaps 1 & 2 not so much?

I use simulIDE for teaching and like to move away from the "magic" of Arduino Wiring to writing raw AVR gcc based programs as it helps understand the micros better. The Arduino tools support this and in the Arduino IDE if you write your own main() function it builds like a "real" C program... although using the Arduino C++ compiler really...

Being able to call the source file ".c" would be helpful. Allowing multiple source file based programs is useful in teaching students to modularise their code by breaking up into libraries.

I do all this at the moment by working in the Arduino IDE (and later Eclipse) and simply uploading the hex file produced by it to simulIDE which works fine but it would be nice to be more integrated.

Hi.

You can build any kind of project using makefiles.
Just open a makefile and hit "compile button".
You still need to load the hex from the mcu, but if you turn on the "autoload" property, then you don't need to reload manually.

It is planned to add the possibility to configure the command to run when you compile, but by now it has low priority.
Indeed, the whole thing needs a redesing, including the ability to create projects, choose any compiler you want and configure commands to execute.

But this will take some time, at the moment I have to finish some big changes introduced recently:
- New simulation core (convert all components).
- New Subcircuits with the hability to create boards (convert old subcircuits and convert Arduinos to Subcircuits).
- New multi-mcu feature (need testing and uart module)
- New Oscope (and new data-logger coming).
- New MCU simulator (low priority).

Anyway any ideas are very wellcome.