ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Sep 06, 2021 12:45 pm #92215 Has any IDE been able to handle single stepping the ESP8266 yet?

Given the nature of the ESP8266 (with the program in FLASH and no software interrupts,) I would think this would be very hard to do. I don't think code can be run from RAM.

In order to single step, a jump to a breakpoint handler would be needed to be placed into the code. Then to move on to the next instruction, a new jump would need to be placed in the FLASH at the next address and the breakpoint handler would need to be modified. Programming one byte would be hard.

Maybe I am missing something.

Mark.

- Wed Sep 08, 2021 10:21 am #92241 I've read about a gdb extension that can do it.

But I never went to the trouble. I don't think it's really needed. There are always other methods for debugging, besides just trying to program correctly in the first place.

- Wed Sep 08, 2021 6:44 pm #92265 I use Eclipse with gdb and the gdb stub - works really well actually, but as Erik mentioned there are other ways to do it that are also pretty simple, and you have to be careful with the gdb stub because it messes up real time type events

- Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:41 am #92275 Good point there. My software makes heavily use of timers and the task queue, difficult to debug that way.