This month's Eclipse Cloud DevTools Contributor Award goes to Ericsson (represented by Colin Grant) for contributing the web-based Memory Inspector. Congratulations and thanks for your contributions!
As you might observe, there is currently a lot of momentum around Theia being adapted in the embedded space. There is even a special interest group (SIG) at the Eclipse Foundation focused on this topic, as well as the new Eclipse CDT.cloud project for web-based C/C++ tooling. Apparently, Eclipse Theia is a perfect basis for the development of custom tools for embedded development. Many vendors have also started to strategically contribute to the ecosystem (see for example Theia Blueprint). One very special contribution, the memory inspector, was made in 2021. Today, we want to award Ericsson (represented by Colin Grant) for this fantastic contribution.
The memory inspector, as the name implies, allows for a detailed memory view while debugging a program. This is essential for embedded development. The memory inspector is attached to a debug session and provides full integration with Theia. It is worth mentioning that the memory inspector is quite flexible and can also be used for languages other than C/C++.
The memory view during the debug session is fully dynamic. As shown in the screenshot below, the values (to the right) will change while stepping through the program. Changes are highlighted so users can directly focus on interesting registers. Embedded developers will be especially amazed by the rich feature set of this contribution. For more details on the various advanced features of the memory inspector, check out this article.
Since the initial contribution, the memory inspector has seen continuous improvement. However, as it is a component for building custom C/C++ tools, there was no direct way to see or try it. To address this, it has recently been included in CDT.cloud Blueprint, a template tool for C/C++ development based on Theia. Using CDT.cloud Blueprint is also the most convenient way to check out the memory inspector. You can download it on the CDT.cloud website. Now that the memory inspector is available in a downloadable tool, it is the perfect time for this Eclipse Cloud DevTools Contributor award.
It is worth mentioning that Ericsson is a very strong contributor to the Eclipse Cloud DevTools ecosystem, especially to Eclipse Theia, and were among the original founding members of the Theia project! Therefore, this will likely not be the last award nomination, but for now, congratulations for the February 2022 contributor award!
This Eclipse Cloud DevTools contributor award is sponsored by EclipseSource, providing consulting and implementation services for web-based tools, Eclipse Theia, CDT.cloud and C/C++ tools.