FAQ - CCSv7

Installation

Q: Can I install CCSv7 on a computer that has previous versions?

Yes you can install multiple versions of CCS on the same machine. Just make sure to install them in different directories (i.e. not on top of one another).

Q: What is the difference between the web installer and the offline installer?

The web installer is a small installation program that you download and execute. You then make your installation selections (device families and features desired) and the installer then downloads and installs only those selected packages. The offline installer is a large package that includes all packages (except for those only available via the App Center). The offline installer is generally only recommended if you have issues with your firewall or anti-virus software blocking the web installer. The offline installer is also useful if you need to install CCS on a machine that does not have internet access.

Q: My username has Unicode characters and CCS fails to install. How do I resolve this?

Due to a limitation in the Eclipse Application Framework used by CCS, the username cannot contain any Unicode characters. In order to install the product, please create a temporary admin user and install CCS for all users.

Q: On Linux the installer just exits without doing anything, why is this?

The installer requires some packages to be installed in order to run. You are likely missing one or more of these packages. Please refer to Linux_Host_Support_CCSv7 for more information on installing on Linux.

Q: On Windows the installer just exits without doing anything, why is this?

There is some software that sets up the TCL_LIBRARY environment variable which is interfering with the CCS installer. Please unset this variable temporarily, before trying the install.

Q: After installing on Linux, CCS simply refuses to open

This may happen when updating or installing a newer version of the same stream of CCS (7.0.0 to 7.1.0, for example). Nothing happens when double-clicking the desktop icon and, if launching from a command line, the following error is shown:

user@host:/opt/ti/ccsv6/eclipse$ ./ccstudio 
Permission denied
If this continues, please run fsclean or set TI_APPDATA_DIR to directory you have permissions to access

The cause is that, if CCS was previously launched as root, the temporary directory in the user area may have become tainted and its ownership was set to root.
In other words, the temporary CCS directory would look similar to:

user@host:~/.ti$ ls -al
total 20
drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root      4096 Jan 24  2014 .
drwxr-xr-x 135 user     user      12288 Jan 26 11:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root      4096 Jan 24  2014 CCSv6
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         0 Jan 24  2014 .lock

To fix this, use chown to change the ownership of all the directories and the .lock file back to the user

user@host:~/.ti$ sudo chown -hR user:user * .lock

Q: After installing CCS, I found out some features (such as certain processor families or debug probes) are missing. Is there a way to add these features?

Yes. Simply re-run the installer executable (either online or offline). Follow the installer screens and select the same directory as the original install; after that, keep following the installer screens and select the missing components.

Q: When installing CCS it says "An error occured: can't read "update": no such variable". How do I resolve this?

Make sure you are installing CCS to a clean directory where a previous installation does not exist.

Q: How can I perform a silent installation of CCS?

For CCSv6, you can first create a response file by running the installer with these options:
<installername> --save-response-file <full path to response file\responsefile name> --skip-install true

For example:

 ccs_setup_6.1.1.00022.exe --save-response-file c:\temp\response.txt --skip-install true 

Note that the directory for the response file must already exist.

You can then click through the installer, picking the options you'd like to install. The parameter --skip-install true will skip the installation part and just create the response.txt file. If you omit that option it will continue with the installation.

To run the installation using the response.txt file:

ccs_setup_6.1.1.00022.exe --response-file c:\temp\response.txt 

Other options you can use with the above command are --prefix <installdirectory> and --mode unattended

Licensing

Q: Where is the link to the 90 day eval license?

This is no longer needed with CCSv7. You can simply download, install and use CCS without time limit.

Updating

Q: How do I get updates to CCS?

By default CCS automatically checks for updates each time it starts. This update check will find updates to features that are already installed. For example it will find updates to the CCS IDE, compiler bug fix release, device support... It will not find new features including new feature revisions of the compiler.

Q: How do I search for new features for CCS?

The App Center which is accessible from the View menu is useful for finding new features. The App Center will highlight a selection of new features that are relevant to the device families that you have installed. This is the best way to install completely new features. For installing new compilers I prefer to use Help -> Install New Software and then select the Code Generation Tools update site. This will then find all the new compiler releases.

Q: How do I get TI-RTOS Updates?

The main way to get TI-RTOS is via Resource Explorer which will automatically show you the latest version of TI-RTOS or the SDK that it is included in. The automatic update check will find incremental updates to TI-RTOS. For more significant releases you can use the App Center or Help -> Install New Software.

Q: When installing CCS updates I get a dialog box that warns me that the feature is unsigned. Is this a problem?

Most but not all of the updates released by TI are signed, however not all of them are. Similarly if you are installing an update or feature from a partner it may not have been digitally signed. When this happens you get a warning from CCS noting that the feature has not been signed. In general these are safe to ignore but it is best to always make sure you know where the update is coming from before installing it.

Projects

Q: Is it possible for CCS to override the TEMP and TMP environment variables that are used to determine where temporary files are placed during CCS build process?

During the CCS build process, gmake creates temporary batch files in the directory that corresponds to the user's TEMP and TMP System Environment Variables. The compiler also uses this directory for temporary files during compilation. CCS has the ability to let the user override these environment variables within the scope of CCS, so you don't have to modify your global System variables.

In CCS, open the menu Window->Preferences->C/C++->Build->Environment, and use the Add button to add the two variables:



Set the appropriate button to either "append" or "replace" variables to native environment.
On Windows, make sure to use backslashes (not forward slashes) in the paths. Also make sure the directory specified for the variables exists before running the build.

Q: Is it possible to convert a non-RTSC CCS project to a RTSC project, and vice-versa??

To convert a non-RTSC project to a RTSC project, simply add a RTSC configuration file (.cfg) to the project. CCS will ask if you want to enable RTSC support for the project and if you click "Yes", will convert it to a RTSC project.

It is not possible to convert a RTSC project to a non-RTSC project. In this case, you would need to start over by creating a new project.

Q: In some cases, during project build, I see the file ccsLinker.opt getting passed to the linker instead of the list of object files . What is this file and when is it used?

The 'ccsLinker.opt' file is generated by CCS and passed to the linker if the list of linker options and input files on the linker command line exceeds the maximum command line length of the host operating system. So, on Windows 7, a project with a large number of object files (.obj) may pass the linker options and input files to the linker via the ccsLinker.opt file rather than directly on the command line.

Debugging

Q: I can connect to my target but I get errors when I try to load my program. How do I fix this?

It is likely that a data verification error occurred. See the below FAQ for details.

Q: What does 'data verification error' mean?

See: Troubleshooting_CCS_-_Data_Verification_Errors

Q: What is the difference between Run/Resume and Free Run?

Free Run disables breakpoints before executing code on the target. Essentially you are running free of the debugger. You will not see any updates to any views or printfs if you perform a Free Run.

Q: How can I view non debuggable devices and routers in the Debug view?

The 'Debug' view hides non-debuggable devices by default. If you wish to view these devices:
Right-click in the Debug view and select "Show All Cores" in the context menu. A node called "Non Debuggable Devices" will then appear which you can expand to see the devices.

You can also set this within a given debug configuration so every time a debug session is launched with that target configuration (with or wihout associated project), the settings will take effect.

Go to CCS menu Run->Debug Configurations, and enable Non Debuggable Devices/Routers for the desired debug configuration.

Q: In multi-core devices, the CIO console prints out the CPU-core name after every output character when using assert() statements. Is there a way to prevent this?

In CCS all the CIO output goes to a single console by default, so CCS inserts the CPU-core name in front so that you can tell which core it is coming from. For assert() statements, the CPU-core name is added whenever a given CPU flushes its CIO buffer, making the output very difficult to read. There is an option to control this. To change the setting, go to menu Run->Debug Configurations. Select your debug configuration and uncheck the option to use the same console for all cores.

Q: My BeagleBone is Rev A5 and greater, but I still can't connect to my CCS . Why?

If you are trying to connect to the board and is getting this error:

Error connecting to the target:
(Error -151 @ 0x0)
One of the FTDI driver functions used during
the connect returned bad status or an error.
The cause may one or more of: invalid emulator serial number,
blank emulator EEPROM, missing FTDI drivers, faulty USB cable.
Use the xds100serial command-line utility in the 'common/uscif'
folder to verify the emulator can be located.
(Emulation package n.n.nnn.n)

Or is running the xds100serial utility and is getting:

C:\ti\ccsv6\ccs_base\common\uscif>xds100serial.exe
Scanning for XDS100 emulators...

VID/PID     Type         Serial #  Description
0403/6010   blank EEPROM unknown   no description available

Or the Windows control panel is showing two USB serial ports when you connect the board to the PC, then you have a BeagleBone board with a blank (non-programmed) FTDI device.
Therefore you need to program the board with a known good configuration. One can be found at CircuitCo's BeagleBone page.

Q: Can I have a debug two boards using two separate emulators at the same time?

Yes, this is possible. See this wiki topic for more details: Multi-Emulator Debug with CCSv5

Q: When debugging program in cache, I see cache lines getting invalidated. Why is this happening?

For any kind of action that involves setting software breakpoints (this also includes single-stepping or running to an address) on C6x, the corresponding cache line is invalidated. This is expected behavior since software breakpoints require the breakpoint opcode being written to the program memory at that address.

Q: I can connect to the target and load my program but the menus/icons for target execution (resume, suspend, step, etc) are not available (greyed out). What happened?

Most likely the Debug view was closed. See this FAQ.

If the Debug view was not closed, other potential issues could be related to the CCS Simple perspective as detailed in this E2E forum post.

Q: I get an error "Could not fetch next record for SQL statement" when trying to launch a debug session and running fsclean does not help. What else can I do?

Try deleting the target cache files as described in the troubleshooting guide.

Q: "Cannot read System Setup data from XML file <file path/name>.ccxml XML configuration file has no <configurations> root node." How do I resolve this?

Try creating and using a new target configuration file.

Q: "Is it possible for the Graphs view and properties to carry over from one CCS session to another, so when CCS is restarted the graphs come up again?

CCS saves the arrangement and contents of graph views when a debug session is terminated and restarted, but not when CCS itself is shut down and restarted. The solution to help streamline the input of graphing properties is the "Export" and "Import" buttons at the bottom of the graph properties. You could export the graph properties to a file and then import it back when you restart CCS.

General

Q: Where are the simulators? They don't seem to come with CCSv7

See: CCSv6 Changes.

Q: Are C54x devices supported?

CCSv7 does not support C54x devices. The last release to support C54x is CCSv5.5.

Q: Can I use DSP/BIOS with CCSv7?

Yes you can use DSP/BIOS with CCSv7 and build projects. Note that the Real-time analysis features are not supported with DSP/BIOS.

Q: How do I modify the maximum Java heap size for Eclipse?

Open <ccstudio.ini> in /ccsv7/eclipse (/ccsv7/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents/Eclipse for MacOS). Adjust the "-Xmx" argument. Note that on Windows CCS is a 32-bit application hence there is a cap on how much you can increase this value to with it having any effect. And also, having too high a value may cause other IDE stability problems depending on how much content is open in the workspace and what features are being used. If you have 4+ GB of system RAM, the "sweet spot" seems to be between 512m to 768m, and it works best for most users.

Q: Does CCSv7 support Windows 10?

Yes.

Q: Is the XDS510LC emulator from Spectrum Digital supported with F2837xS/D and F2807x devices?

These devices have an Icepick router which is NOT supported by the XDS510LC. Please use one of the supported emulators as mentioned in this forum post.