Eclipse IDE Support

The FXCore tooling comes with some customizations for the Notepad++ Windows editor (syntax coloring and launching the assembler). This is useful but Notepad++ is not a full software development environment. This section describes support for writing FXCore assembler code in the Eclipse IDE. There are many advantages to using a full IDE (Eclipse) over a customized editor (Notepad++). Just a few features we find particularly useful in our development of FXCore code:

• Everything is visible in one window including source code, directories and files, output from the assembler, etc.
• Eclipse is available on multiple platforms including Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
• Eclipse organizes code into projects to easily navigate and see all the related source files in one view.
• Eclipse has out-of-the-box integration with popular version control systems like Git, GitHub, CVS, and others. This simplifies and automates backup and versioning of source files.
• Running the assembler is smoother with output visible in the IDE itself. No additional window is opened.
• Eclipse has an entire ecosystem of plugins and support tools for software development tasks.

The FXCoreMP repo contains a number of Eclipse configuration files to support FXCore programing in the /eclipse directory. Installing them is described in the following sections. It is highly recommended to use a current version of Eclipse (2024.5 or later) as support for these configurations was significantly improved. These instructions will assume a fresh Eclipse install, but this can also be done on a existing installation (adding FXCore support will not disturb any Eclipse support for other languages). These steps are shown on Windows, but should work on any OS supported by Eclipse.

When completed, Eclipse support for FXCore development consists of the following features:

• Recognition of FXCore assembler source file types *.fxc, *.fxc-mp, *.fxm, *.fxo, and *.toon.
• Syntax coloring of FXCore assembler code including macro statements and TOON syntax.
• Start/end bracket highlighting for {...} , (...) , and [...]
• Quick launching of the toolchain to run the assembler
• Viewing of toolchain output directly in the Console window of Eclipse
• Build artifacts are created in a /bin directory of the project so the source directory does not get cluttered with intermediate files and simplifies version control with tools like GitHub.

Step 0: Install Eclipse

Download and install the most recent stable version of Eclipse from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/installer.

You can use any of the Eclipse IDE packages for FXCore development (Eclipse for Java, Eclipse for C++, etc). Once installed launch Eclipse and select a directory for the Eclipse workspace.

Step 1: Configure Content Types

Eclipse contains many editors for different types of files. This step will associate FXCore files with the editor that (in a later step) will be customized to understand FXCore assembly language syntax.

Navigate to Window -> Preferences -> General -> Content Types Expand the Text node and then click Add Child: Give the new content type the name “FXCore” and click OK.