Release notes for the IAR C-SPY Debugger for ARM 5.41

Important information
New features
Known problems
Program corrections
User documentation corrections
Miscellaneous
Release history

Important information

The C-SPY macro __loadModule(filename, suppress) has been renamed to __loadImage(filename, suppress).
C-SPY in EWARM 5.40 comes with an improved mechanism and configuration scheme for the flash loader function. An existing project that employs a flash loader with a legacy configuration, will be automatically migrated to the new scheme with default settings. The default settings will in most cases be sufficient. Old settings are converted to a new configuration file (with the extension .board) and may be used if the default settings are not appropriate. Read more about the new mechanism and configuration scheme for flash loaders in the Flash Loader Guide.

New features

New C-SPY macro function
__targetDebuggerVersion() returns the version of the debugger. This makes it possible to write debugger macro scripts that adapt to different versions of the debugger.

Known problems

The support for Cortex-M interrupts is limited in the simulator. Only one interrupt at a time is simulated. No nested interrupts, tail-chaining etc. The NVIC interrupt controller is not simulated. Interrupts can only be enabled/disabled globally using the PRIMASK register or the intrinsic functions __enable_interrupt() and __disable_interrupt().
The disassembler does not fully support unified assembler.
Watch on a static variable defined within a function fails because the variable is handled in the wrong scope. The workaround is to use the Locals window or to specify a name within the scope in the Watch window, for example main::the_static_var.

When performing a Go To command in the Memory window in little-endian mode, the position (shown as pos ####### in the lower right corner of the IDE main window) will not be the same as the value entered in the Go To field.
[EW14355]

Choosing Project Options>Debugger>Plugins and selecting the Factory settings option does not have any effect.
[EW16078]

Profiling large projects can be slow.
[EW17781]

If the same name is used for a data type and a data object, the data object is not displayed in the Watch window.
[EW19334]
Structures that are placed at an absolute address using the @ syntax are not displayed correctly in the debugger Watch window.
[EW19987]

An array located at an absolute address is displayed in the watch window as a single int instead of an array. Problem does not occur if variable is located at a user defined segment.
[EW20207]

Program corrections

The LDREX and STREX instructions are no longer missing in the simulator for Cortex-M3.
[EW19814]
Dragging an expression containing a dereferenced function pointer onto the Memory window no longer causes the debugger to crash.
[EW21390]
Editing a Trace Starting, Stopping or Filter point, set on a source line, no longer results in an error message.
[EW21393]
The CMX RTOS plugin no longer fails if some symbols, for example "queue", are missing in the target project.
[EW21437]

User documentation corrections

IAR Embedded Workbench® IDE for ARM® User Guide (UARM-16), new functions:
- In section "FPU" on page 432, the following information is missing:
  Select VFPv3 on a system that implements a VFP unit conforming to architecture VFPv3.
- In section "Debugging using the ST-Link driver" on page 246-247, add the following option to the Setup sub-section:
  Interface
  Use this option to specify the communication interface between the ST-Link debug probe and the target system. Choose between:
  - JTAG (default)
  - SWD; uses fewer pins than JTAG.
- In section "Descriptions of C-SPY command line options" on page 490, add the following description:
  --stlink_interface={JTAG|SWD}
  Parameters
  JTAG Uses JTAG communication with the target system (default).
  SWD Uses SWD communication with the target system; uses fewer pins than JTAG communication.
  Applicability
  The C-SPY ST-Link driver.
  Description
  Use this option to specify the communication between the ST-Link debug probe and the target system.
- In section "Description of C-SPY system macros" on page 521, add the following description:
  __isBatchMode()
  Return Value
  
  C-SPY runs in cspybat
  
  1
  
  C-SPY runs in Embedded Workbench
  
  0
  
  Description
  This macro tells if the debugger is running in the IDE or in cspybat.
  Applicability
  This system macro is available in all C-SPY drivers.
- In section "Description of C-SPY system macros" on page 521, the following C-SPY macro lacks description:
  __targetDebuggerVersion()
  Return Value
  A macro string.
  Description
  This macro returns the version of the debugger. This makes it possible to write debugger macro scripts that adapt to different versions of the debugger.

IAR Embedded Workbench® IDE for ARM® User Guide (UARM-16), removed functions:
- It is no longer possible to simulate the ARM7TDMI/ARM9TDMI pipeline. Due to this, the following sections in the User Guide are obsolete:
  - Page 172: Three menu commands are removed:
    - Run in Pipeline Mode
    - Pipeline Trace Window
    - Memory Access Configuration
  - Page 173-175: Three section are no longer relevant:
    - Pipeline trace window
    - Memory access configuration
    - Memory access cost

IAR Embedded Workbench® IDE for ARM® User Guide (UARM-16), corrections:
- Page xxxi: Replace "145: __loadModule return values" with "145: __loadImage return values".
- Page 534: Replace "Table 145: __loadModule return values" with "Table 145: __loadImage return values".
- Page 413-414: The section "Report assert dialog box" is not relevant for IAR Embedded Workbench® IDE for ARM®.

Miscellaneous

Running the debugger as a command line tool
This is now covered in the User Guide.

Passing command line parameters to a debugged application
A rudimentory mechanism exists to pass command line parameters to a debugged application. Use the /args option on the Extra Options page in the Debugger category of the Project options dialog box. Syntax:

    /args arg0 arg1 ...

Multiple lines with /args are allowed. For example:

    /args --logfile log.txt
    /args --verbose

In the application, the following variables must be defined. The variables will be initialized by the debugger at application start.

    __no_init int __argc;
    __no_init const char* __argv[MAX_ARGS];
    __no_init __root char __argvbuf[MAX_ARG_SIZE];

`__argc`	The number of arguments in `__argv`
`__argv`	An array of pointer to strings holding the arguments, must be large enough to fit the number of parameters
`__argvbuf`	Storage area for `__argv`, must be large enough to hold all command line parameters

Release history

V5.40 2009-07-10

New features

Interrupt definitions in ddf files is available in the interrupt simulation setup dialogs for Cortex-M devices.
These new features have been added to cspybat:
- code coverage
- download only mode
- timeout option
A new C-SPY macro __delay(milliseconds).

Program corrections

The debugger could end up in infinite loops while unwinding call stack.
[EW20280]
Debug information for stepping was off by one line when an include file was completely empty.
[EW20541]
The C-SPY macro __gdbserver_exec_command was missing.
[EW20857]
It is now possible to simulate exceptions with exception numbers below 16 for Cortex-M cores.
[EW20866,EW20867,EW20931]
The possibility to edit interrupt descriptions has been disabled for cores that has only IRQ and FIQ interrupts. This will prevent confusing error messages from appearing.
[EW20868]
A rare problem with downloading files in the Motorola S37 format into the wrong memory location has been corrected.
[EW20964]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
Using the --drv_vector_table_base option no longer causes the flashloader to fail.
[EW21171]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
The Function Profiler now shows correct values.
The disassembly in the trace window is now correct for Cortex-M.
[EW21187]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
The disassembly window now display disassembler when running the ST-Link driver.
[EW21198]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
The source file paths retrieved from the externally built ELF/DWARF object file are now correctly interpreted by the debugger.
[EW21223]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
Line number information in the debugger is now accurate. Highlighting and breakpoint setting now works correctly.
[EW21268]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
Downloading to flash memory no longer causes the IDE to become unresponsive.
[EW21297]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
Stepping in a complex C++ program no longer causes the displayed source code location not to reflect the current program counter.
[EW21300]
In EWARM 5.40.4:
The CMX plugin no longer fails to detect the CMX RTOS when the RTOS is compiled in thumb mode.
[EW21311]

5.30 2009-01-23

Program corrections

The Auto window is available in this release.
The CMX plugin module uses one breakpoint instead of two during its initialization. This reduces the risk of plugin failure due to lack of hardware breakpoints.
[EW19139]
The result of some floating-point expressions was incorrectly displayed in the Watch window.
[EW20303]
With the Luminary FTDI driver, data breakpoints could only be used right after first download. For any subsequent download, data breakpoints were disabled and could not be enabled.
[EW20360]
CPSID and CPSIE were incorrectly exchanged when disassembling in ARM mode. This has been corrected.
[EW20521]
The MCR instruction was incorrectly disassembled as MCR2. This has been corrected.
[EW20523]
The flashloader based on a previous flashloader framework could not properly be invoked from cspybat.exe. This has been corrected.
[EW20529]
The C-SPY macro __openFile ( input_file, "r+b" ) could earlier fail if the input file had the read-only attribute set. This has been corrected.
[EW20268]
The debugger did not support the semihosting command SYS_FLEN which caused the C library functions fseek() and ftell() to fail. This has been corrected.
[EW20680]
When the Simulator attempted to execute a VFP instruction with VFP disabled (EN in FPSCR), it correctly took the UNDEF interrupt (offset 0x4) but the LR was off by 2 bytes - not 4 bytes as it should. This has been corrected.
[EWARM-169]

5.20 2008-07-11

Program corrections

If an external editor was used in the IDE, it was also used in the debugger. This could make it impossible to set breakpoints in the source code. Now the debugger always uses the built-in editor.
[EW19591]
If the simulator executed a tight loop containing illegal instructions, it would flood the debug log window with error messages and the IDE would hang. This has been corrected.
[EW19815]
The debugger can now read all RealView 3.1 generated ELF/DWARF files.
[EW19868]
Examining a function pointer that is a class member, either with a tooltip or by adding it to the watch window, no longer makes the debugger crasch.
[EW20034]
A multiple failure to open a file using the fopen() library function could use up all available file handles. This no longer occurs.
[EW20102]
For Cortex-M cores, the 16 bit MOV(register) instruction is now simulated correctly when PC is the destination register.
[EW20200]

New features

Debugger startup
You can now start the debugger with or without downloading code, using two new buttons on the toolbar, or two new Project menu commands. There are also two new corresponding ways to restart the debugger during the debug session.

Loading multiple ELF images
The debugger can load multiple ELF images using the C-SPY macro __loadModule().

Symbols window
The Symbols window displays the complete list of symbols used within the project. In contrast to the Source Browser, the list of symbols is not based on project source files but is retrieved from the debug information. This means, that it also lists symbols from libraries that you do not have the source for. It also lists assembler labels, which are not conveniently visible in any other window.

New flash loader mechanism
A new flash loader mechanism is available that adds increased speed and flexibility.

5.11 2007-11-28

Program corrections

The macro function __openFile() now takes all kind of parameters, not only "r" or "w". In particular, it is possible to use the "b" parameter, to open the file in binary mode.
[EW17017, EW19034]
CPSID and CPSIE were exchanged in disassembly for Cortex-M.
[EW18739]
When simulating a core with no system coprocessor (CP15) support, a CP15 instruction could crash the simulator.
[EW19244]
When several compilation units used the same type, a problem with debug information could earlier cause some of the instances of that type to be incorrectly handled by C-SPY. This could cause syntax errors in C-SPY expressions containing the type and also make it impossible to expand its members.
[EW19338, EW19340]
The simulator did not simulate the SVC instruction correctly for Cortex-M cores.
[EW19484]
Corrupted semihosting data structures could cause the debugger to crash.
[EW19507]
In some cases, references were incorrectly shown in the QuickWatch, Watch and Locals windows. This has been corrected.
[EW19542]
Setting a breakpoint in a large switch statement could earlier fail.
[EW19553,19611]
When debugging nested switch statement in ARM mode, the current source code location displayed could be incorrect. This made it look like the wrong case statement was executed.
[EW19681]

New features

Support for the Cortex-M1 core.

5.10 2007-07-02

Program corrections

Cortex-M3 devices were earlier started in unprivileged mode in the simulator.
[EW18742]
The debugger used to crash for code where the base class is a template class.
[EW18999]
C-SPY no longer crashes if a C-SPY macro invoked by a breakpoint deletes the very same breakpoint.
[EW19001]
C-SPY is now able to download a large image to the target.
[EW19855]

V4.41A 2006-12-08

Program corrections

Interrupt simulation was always incorrectly enabled after reload of a project.
[EW18578]

New features

Exporting command line for cspybat
C-SPY now generates a file with helpful information that can be used for running the debugger from the command line using the cspybat utility. Every time the debugger is initialized (technically, it happens when a project is loaded and when terminating a debug session) a bat file is generated that can be used almost without modifications to start cspybat from the command line with the same settings as in the IDE.
The file is generated as $PROJ_DIR$\settings\projectname.cspy.bat

V4.40A 2006-05-18

Program corrections

The CMX plugin could crash the debugger if debug information generation was disabled in project options.
[EW17832]
Debugger testing for read/write memory when setting breakpoints interfered with the ST STR910 flash controller.
[EW17930]
The C-SPY macro __emulatorStatusCheckOnRead() did not work correctly, causing problems when debugging TI TMS470R1B1M.
[EW17992,EW18012]
Some ThreadX views could crash the debugger when running in big endian mode.
[EW18010]
A row with a single newline in the debugger Extra Options dialog crashed the debugger.
[EW18011]
A syntax error message and a macro definition error message appeared erroneously in the debug window under certain circumstances.
[EW18069]

New features

Support for the Cortex-M series has been added
Symbolic Memory window
A symbolic memory window has been added. It displays raw memory contents annotated with any global symbols present.

V4.31A 2006-02-03

Program corrections

The Live watch window is currently only supported by the simulator, and should not be active for other debugger drivers, like JTAG.
[EW15698]
MSR with an immediate operand was disassembled and simulated incorrectly for some immediate values.
[EW17465]
The simulator could errorneously set the processor mode to system mode when running SWI, LDM, STM or BKPT instructions.
[EW17454]
Selecting hardware reset when using a flash loader should give one reset before flashing and a second reset just before starting the application. The second hardware reset was not performed.
[EW17777]

New features

Stack window
To monitor the memory consumption and the integrity of the stack, a new Stack window has been added. It shows the stack contents as raw data, C/C++ variables, and function frames. It also shows current and maximum stack consumption graphically. Warnings can be issued when the stack exceeds a certain level or if the stack pointer points outside the stack memory.
New breakpoint category - Log breakpoint
Log breakpoints make it easy to log messages whenever execution passes a certain code location without having to add any code to the target application. When a log breakpoint is triggered, it writes to the Debug Log window and then the application continues execution.
New way to toggle breakpoints
You can now set or clear a breakpoint by double-clicking in the left margin of the editor window; the breakpoint location is marked by a red X. If there is more than one possible breakpoint location in the source line, the breakpoint is placed on the first location.

V4.30A 2005-06-23

Program corrections

The Memory window now displays “--“ for each individual memory unit that cannot be read accessed; as opposed to the whole row.
[EW16446]
Setting data breakpoints in explicitly sized (8/16/32) memory crashed the debugger. [EW16756]
The CMX RTOS plugin could fail to be activated because it did not properly detect the CMX operating system. [EW16890]
The simulation of the SMLAL instruction was incorrect. Upon entry to the instruction the content of the upper word RdHi was lost (RdHi was set equal to RdLo). [EW16902]
When disassembling in Thumb mode, labels were shown on a separate line, with a preceeding blank line. When single-stepping, the blank line was highlighted instead of the line with the current instruction.

V4.20A 2005-01-10

Program corrections

The simulation of the VFP coprocessor could not be disabled by clearing the EN bit in the VFPEXC.
[EW14654]
At certain conditions when debugging for big endian processors C-SPY could crash or stop responding.
[EW15126]
The debugger disassembly wrongly switched to thumb mode 64 bytes after an arm label if the code was followed further down by a thumb label.
[EW15571]
The Analog Devices (ADUC702X) flash programming algorithm failed if the binary image contained gaps.
[EW15780]
Setting breakpoints in C was not possible if the PC did not line up with a statement boundary.
[EW15590]
The simulator incorrectly set the Q-flag when executing SMLAxy or SMLAWy instructions even when no overflow occured in the execution.
[EW15603]
The file CMXTinyArmPlugin.ewplugin contained an incorrect path.
[EW15702]
Under certain circumstances, IAR Embedded Workbench could crash when starting C-SPY and the CmxArmPlugin or the CMXTinyArmPlugin was used.
[EW15703]
Annoying 'data coverage not supported' log message removed.
[EW15704]
If the flash loader operation failed and gave an error dialog box the progress bar could be left open.
[EW16050]
If, during a simulation, execution reached unallocated memory, a new memory block would be allocated and filled with zeros. Then the execution would continue in this block, since 0x0 is a valid instruction in both ARM and Thumb mode. The execution would continue, potentially until the memory runs out on the host machine. This has been fixed. Now the simulation stops and an error message is displayed whenever the program reaches memory that has not been allocated. The simulator allocates memory in 16 Kbyte blocks. If the error message "Tried to execute instruction in unallocated memory space, address 0xXXXXX000" is displayed, the execution did go wrong in the 16 Kbyte block before 0xXXXXX000. Then it continued until it reached the 16 Kbyte border, at 0xXXXXX000, where it stopped.
[EW16085]

New features

By using different memory zones, you can control the access width used for reading and writing in, for example, the Memory window. For normal memory, the default zone Memory can be used, but certain I/O registers may require to be accessed as 8, 16, or 32 bits to give correct results.

The debugger displays I/O register bit names for most supported devices.

V4.11A 2004-06-10

At certain conditions when debugging for big endian processors, C-SPY could crash or stop responding.
[EW15126]
Incorrect simulation of the SMULL instruction.
[EW15191]
Wrong simulation of the instructions
SMLAW (SMLAWB, SMLAWT) SMLA (SMLABB, SMLABT, SMLATB, SMLATT) SMLAL (SMLALBB, SMLALBT, SMLALTB, SMLALTT) SMULW (SMULWB, SMULWT) [EW15463]
A debug information construct was wrongly handled by the debugger and caused it to crash.
[EW15712]
The simulator always started at address zero regardless of the start address specified by the program start label. The simulator now starts at the program start label if it exists, if not it will start at address zero.

V4.10B 2004-03-09

None.

V4.10A 2004-02-21

Packed structs (#pragma pack) are not correctly displayed in C-SPY.
[EW14151]
Executing a "Memory Fill" command for very large chunks of memory could take a long time and occasionally lead to debugger crashes.
[EW14252]
The simulator responded with an illegal instruction error when executing coprocessor instructions. The new behavior is to silently ignore them unless it is recognized by the simulator, for example the VFP.
[EW14489]
Long pathnames to projects could trigger a bug that forced the driver to use big endian mode.
[EW14860]
Wrong simulation of QDADD and QDSUB.
[EW14884]

V3.40B-P1 2003-10-06

Error in simulation of the VFP instructions FMSC, FNMAC and FNMSC.
[EW14464]
VFP conversion of doubles to float could trash other VFP registers.
[EW14473]

V3.40A 2003-07-03

Program corrections

Pressing the End key anywhere on the last line in the Memory window will put the cursor to the end of the previous line. This also happens when selecting memory.
[EW12542, EW12645, EW12649]

A problem where .ddf files containing lines longer than 1024 characters could not be loaded has been fixed. The maximum line length is still fixed, but is now 16384 characters.
[EW13875]

New features

Support for the Vector Floating-point Architecture (VFP).

The simulator gives a warning in the log window if it detects an unaligned access. This is because ARM processors do not support unaligned accesses to memory.

V3.30A 2003-02-18

Fixed problem: When executing in pipeline simulation mode the fatal error "Unknown exception 9 in driver" occurred.
[EW13064, EW13065]

V3.21A 2002-09-30

The R0-R14, SPSR registers were not properly synchronized with the R0, R14, SPSR_<mode> registers when modifying one of these registers.

The MSR instruction was incorrectly simulated.

The LDM instruction restoring the PC and the CPSR masked bit 1 of the PC when switching to Thumb mode.

When enabling pipeline mode, breakpoints are triggered when OP-fetch is done which can cause the debugger to stop at an instruction that will not reach the execution stage later on. You must have this in mind when setting breakpoints when running in pipeline mode. In this release, the library function exit() has been modified, and will not interfere with the application anymore.

V3.20A 2002-06-19

ARM instruction set version 5TE is now supported.
Additional disassembly comments to instructions with the [#xx,PC] operand is now supported.
The registers SPSR, R8_usr to R14_usr are now accessible through the Register window.
C-SPY could could give an error message about an illegal instruction for valid code.

Reading SPSR does not take the current processor mode into account, causing the wrong value to be read.

When expanding a structure with bitfields, C-SPY crashed.

Terminal I/O input did only accept ASCII characters (0-127), now characters 0-255 are supported.

V3.11A 2001-12-03

The Call Stack window could sometimes fail to show parameter values.

Code coverage in Thumb mode did not work.
Interrupt simulation did not work properly.

V3.10A 2001-10-02

Data breakpoints on character variables located on even addresses could fail.

The C-SPY SFR window flagged some values as lost and no change of SFR value was possible.

Entering pointers to structure members or array elements in the location field of the edit breakpoint dialog caused a fatal C-SPY error.

The C-SPY simulator could mix up ASR and LSR in some cases. For example:

ldr r4, [r1, r2, LSR #24]

The C-SPY simulator did not handle the UMLAL instruction correctly.

The simulator did not handle the simulation of LDMIA SP!,{...,PC}^ correctly when returning from IRQ to SVC mode. Instead of incrementing SP_irq, SP_svc was modified.

The first message printed in a program using printf() could be lost in the terminal I/O window.

Doing a reset after program termination failed.

Enable pipeline mode. Select Low level - Memory Access Configuration from the menu bar. In the dialog box, click Add. If the OK or Cancel button was clicked, C-SPY crashed.

Single-step in assembler mode when debugging C code crashed C-SPY if the Trace option on the Control menu was enabled.

V2.10D 2001-06-29

The simulator does not consider the mode used when doing this instruction: MRS R3,SPSR. It always read from SPSR_SVR. This is now corrected.

V2.10A 2001-02-21

Support for big-endian mode is implemented in this release. Big-endian mode is selected with the command line option -e. The default mode is little-endian.
Support for ARM9TDMI simulation is implemented. This affects the pipeline simulation and the cycle counter. The ARM9 simulation mode is selected with the command line option -v1. The default mode is ARM7 ( -v0 ).

V1.30A 2000-09-08

Device definition file handling has been implemented in this release. Select the appropriate ddf file in the C-SPY options dialog box in the Embedded Workbench. It will then be possible to open the sfr window and access the sfrs defined for the current chip. The currently available ddf files are installed in the config directory. Corresponding include files (io*.h) are installed in the inc directory.

V1.20A 2000-05-28

The name of this component has been changed from CWARM to CSARM.
Selection of disassembly mode is implemented in this release. Select one of the entries in the Low Level menu.

The cycle-accurate simulation mode is implemented. To enter this mode from start, select "Enable pipeline simulation" on the Simulator tab on the C-SPY options page to start the simulation in cycle accurate mode.
Clock Speed Register is implemented. Fill in the clock speed in Hz. C-SPY will calculate the execution time in microseconds, and display it in the Register window.

V1.10A 1999-12-30

First release.

C-SPY runs in cspybat	1
C-SPY runs in Embedded Workbench	0