The IDE is very user friendly to casual developers and allows to write simple programs without much effort. At the first glance might look like a non-standard C/C++, although the IDE magically adds some include headers and a simple main() calling your setup() and loop() routine when you click on the Upload button. Looks like there is no way to use multiples files in your project, which is OK for small sketches.

For those who want to develop things in the traditional way using the command line, I started a CMake template for Arduino Uno. The template was written in a such way that makes possible to add support for new devices by just creating a new device profile file. There is no restrictions of using this template on other Linux distributions (or even other OS, since CMake runs on Mac and Windows), but adaptations might be needed. Patches are always welcome.

Using the Arduino CMake template

As pre-condition, you will need cmake package (duh!) and a compatible version of Arduino SDK (see Ubuntu Maverick x Uno issue above and how to fix). Only the arduino-core package is necessary for this setup.

Download the latest version of the buildsystem template:

arduino_cmake.tar.gz

This is a modified version of the classic Blink example, converted to a standard C/C++ (it’s really weird why the Arduino libraries are a mixture of C and C++ and not only C). This example is great because gives you visual feedback without attaching any component to the board, since there is a built-in LED on the board tied to pin 13. Because cmake it’s not a widely spread buildsystem (which is a shame for such a great tool), here are some basic instructions of how to build the project. Type this from the root of your project tree:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

You can either export the environment variable ARDUINO_PORT set to your device port or edit CMakeLists.txt and change the default value permanently. Mostly likely you don’t need to touch this if you are using Ubuntu Maverick and Arduino Uno combo.

Two extra targets were added to the generated Makefile for your convenience:

• make flash – Will flash your software to the device connected on ARDUINO_PORT.
• make reset – Restart your board (pretty much the same as the reset button on the board).

Bonus tip

My favorite debugging tool is printf(). The modified version of the Blink application in the template also contains some debug output. Use minicom to read the output from the terminal:

$ minicom -b 115200 -D /dev/ttyACM0

You need to exit from minicom before flash your device again. Do that by hitting CTRL+A and then X.

Disclaimer

Of course that by following this tutorial and using my buildsystem template you can turn your device in a useless geek-looking paperweight. Use at your own risk.

Shadow build – No dirty source tree anymore after compiling your code. Build your code inside your tree is optional, you just need to create a build directory and call your project’s configure script instead. There are many situations when this is specially necessary: building the same tree for different platforms or when you source code is located on a slow storage device (such as network drives and encrypted partitions).

Automated tests integration – Test driven development is being more common every day and has proven to be an important tool to detect regressions. This qmake template provides more then a simple way to run your tests (by typing “make check”), but a visual report of your tests coverage using LCOV.

LCOV showing a unit test coverage

Code documentation – Developers are mostly lazy when writing documents, but not if you provide a easy and beautiful way to check the results of good written code documentation. After hitting “make doc”, a HTML page is automatically generated gathering all information extracted from qdoc3 markups of your source files.

Documentation extracted from Foobar class

Localization support – A modern buildsystem must provide a clever way of translators update the language files. We must remember that translators aren’t necessarily developers and they may not want to dig your code looking for translatable strings. This template provides integration with lupdate and lrelease i18n tools of Qt framework, creating all .ts files necessary to Qt Linguist.

Use Qt Linguist to edit generated translation files

Debugging friendly – This is quite obvious: a build system must be able to generate a debug release. And you also don’t need to install your software (at least in a Linux box) in order to run a quick and dirty test, due to some tricky linker flags.

Packaging – Your software must be redistributable, so we added a Debian packaging example to this template to demonstrate how packable this buildsystem is, specially for Debian-based system. Does anyone want to contribute with the RPM packaging?

Final considerations

I haven’t made tests on others platforms but Linux. I’m pretty sure of unless you are using GCC, some features such as unit tests coverage report cannot be done with the current implementation.

The latest templete snapshot is available for download here. You can also browse the git repository. Please remember: patches and suggestions are welcome.

More information about usage can be found at the BUILD file in the git repository.

If you are brave enough, build your own pacakges with these patches.

Today is Geek Pride Day. I already received greetings from friends, girlfriend, relatives, etc. Two years ago I’ve made a test to find out my nerdness level. At that time my score was 55. If I remember correctly, I was a “Nerd Light” according to the test. Today, I did the test again to see how I’m evolving.

By the way, I would like to congrats you, because if you are reading this blog, you probably is a nerd too.

• DreamHost Wiki
• Autopragmatic
• Craig Jolicoeur

I’ve joined an excursion headed by Milton, composed mostly of my coworkers. There are special discounts for people in the group (in the registration fee): of 50% off.

I’m waiting for a well organized conference as this is this is 10th version. Ten years is enough time to learn from errors of previous conferences (I remember people complaining about long lines in the building entrance and slow Internet connection in previous versions).

From what I have heard is FISL is a conference with more philosophical discussion than technical stuff*. I don’t really like such an emphasis, not because it is not important but that it is usually boring. However I have seen very technical skilled people in the conference  special guests list, so this has given me hope that there will be some nice technical lectures.

With more than 3600 people registered, the event will be a good opportunity to see old friends and meet colleagues who I know only through e-mail and IRC.

*BTW BossaConference is one the best places to discuss about technical things in Brazil.

I would like to thanks everyone who came to the trainning.

Picture of D-Bus workshop taken from Daniel Elias cellphone.

VIM extension Omni Completion can handle nicely the task when programming using C, but I’m not used to such “technology”: ctags + glancing headers files sounds fine to me, until now, when Qt and it’s classes with tons of attributes and methods came to my life. Today I was trying to remember a method name of a QSomething class and I had the brilliant idea to use VIM auto-completion. So disappointing, I just figured out that there is no native C++ support in Omni Completion.

The Oracle told me about a OmniCppComplete add-on. It took me just few minutes to install and see how cool the plugin is. The automatic “suggestions pop-up” is annoying, but happily you can disable and use on-demand with the old and good ^X^O.

Of course there is nothing new here (first OmniCpp version dates from 2006), but you may be like me and be a bit afraid of waste time testing new VIM add-ons, because most of then are crappy hacks. Only few deserves the honor to be in my .vimrc. So, this is all about encouraging VIM users to give OmniCpp a try and be more effective.

OmniCppComplete in action

When I was a SKY (a Brazilian company of cable TV) subscriber, I was used to watch Lost in AXN channel, but when I saw some episodes previews in the Internet, I just figured out that AXN/Sky transmission of  Lost is fullscreen. My TV was doing zoom in the image, so it always looked to me like a 16:9 transmission (shame on me, at this time I didn’t care about image quality and TV setup like nowadays).

Now and after I must wait to buy a whole Lost season in stores. Here are some pictures of how the same Lost footage looks in my TV from AXN Brazil (fullscreen) and CTV Canada (widescreen) broadcast.

"Fullscreen sucks" - as said by my friend Ademar

Now you can see the "extra actor" on the left