DVT Eclipse for C++

Have you heard of this IDE yet? If you are someone who writes Verilog/SystemVerilog/OVM/UVM code, this is a godsend.

DVT is very popular in IP and SoC teams at Intel and I believe it must be the same in other places too.

This is an IDE with many fancy features which were only available to software engineers for their languages like Java, Python , C, C++ and so on.

And this is good enough now for us. They have excellent documentation for how to use it for Verilog and other languages I mentioned at the beginning. So that is not something I am going to repeat here again.

I am also not going to go over all the awesome features like autocomplete, syntax checking, vim/emacs binding etc, because it is all very well documented.

This tutorial will describe how to use it for standalone C++ projects, which is something missing from their documentation.

This is a very detailed step by step guide. You have to do a lot of those things just once and then never. So don’t worry.

Someone might ask, why should I use this IDE when I already have some other IDE available to me. Well, then this is not for you.

Others who are too much in love with their vim/sublime/emacs setup (which works only for them/is not scalable/ is not reusable/very difficult to set up), I am not going to argue with you guys either.

This is useful for noobs like me, who are okay with change.

You can download the example code files from here:

asjain/dvt_cpp

Or just copy paste the code. It is not a lot.

src/ has a single hello world file in it along with a makefile to make it.
I have not added a big project here, because if you have come so far looking for “DVT for C++” then you already
must have a project with makefile and everything.
And you can use this guide to set it up.

Every company would have different way to launch DVT.
For simplicity, I am going to assume this is how you do it.

dvt_eclipse -heap 2G  # launches dvt gui
dvt_eclipse -h   # launches help menu

Once the DVT GUI launches,
click on File -> New -> Project->C/C++ -> Makefile Project with Existing code -> Next
Give the project a name
Give the path of src/
Select ToolChain Linux GCC
Finish
This will load the project files.

Right click on the project name in the explorer
Select Properties -> C/C++ General
Select “Preprocessor Include Paths” -> Providers -> CDT GCC Built in compile settings
A text box will show up at the bottom Command to get compiler specs
Add -std=c++11 at the end
Apply
OK

This will fully load the project. Check “Problems” window at the bottom of the DVT gui to make sure there are no errors.

If you want to run make commands from the gui itself:
Right click on the project name in the project explorer
Build Targets -> Create
Give target name, e.g, clean, all

This will create a “Build Target” right under the project name where you clicked.
Add more targets if you need.

Double clicking on targets will launch make with that target.

To run the executable you just created
Click on “Run” in the top menu bar.
Select “Run Configurations”
Right click on “C/C++ Application”
Select “New”
Give it appropriate name, add arguments is required.
Click Apply and Run.
You can see the output on the DVT Console.

Use this step when you set up your own project and need to add include paths.
Edit the dvt_files/dvt_include_path.xml file with your paths.
Right click on the project name in the explorer
Select Properties -> C/C++ General -> Paths and Symbols
There at the bottom, select Import Settings
Give the path to the settings file located here : dvt_files/dvt_include_paths.xml
Finish

You are all set for a very productive days from here onward.