Target Requirements : Target Trace Facilities: Description

Target Trace Facilities: Description

The rapid prototyping compiler supports tracing of basic primitive data items, conditions and events. The user-defined types, array elements, records, and fields in a record are not supported. Enumerated types are regarded as integers.

Tracing is done through a buffer, meaning that the code, while running, sends report text to a buffer. That report buffer is automatically flushed to the <profile>.trc file in the output directory.

In the compilation profile editor, the menu item Options > Trace Settings… invokes the Tracing dialog.

The Tracing dialog contains the following items:

The trace file <profile_name>.trc is written into the current directory where the generated code is running. Its format depends on what the user has selected, such as:

In the latter case, the user defines the name of the trace function that is called every time the traced element value changes. The function has the following definition:

char * user_func (report_link elem).

It returns a text message string which is then output to the <profile_name>.trc file.

Both the Start Trace/Stop Trace fields are for defining trigger expressions. The goal here is to support compound expressions that are composed of panel bindings-like basic elements.

Using a selection mechanism similar to that for the Simulator, right-clicking on a row/column field results in a pop-up list of available selections relevant to the current scope.

Each row contains two fields:

Note: It is also possible to start/stop tracing using two API functions: enable_trace(), and disable_trace().