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empathicqubit / vscode-cc65-debugger

VSCode extension for CC65 debugging with VICE or Mesen
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c debugging debugging-tool emulation vscode

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vscode-cc65-debugger

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VICE Mesen-X

This is an extension to let you debug CC65 C code (and ASM code to a small degree) made for the Commodore platforms (well-tested) and NES (experimental), including the Commodore 64, using VICE emulator and Visual Studio Code.

Install it here

If you're having trouble understanding how this extension is supposed to be used, any other issues setting it up, or any features to suggest, please let me know by creating an issue or messaging me on Mastodon ( @empathicqubit (at) dizl.de ) [if copy/pasting, replace the (at) with @ ] .

Have you found this project useful, or even utter rubbish? The Flying Spaghetti Monster and I would really appreciate your rating on the Visual Studio Marketplace or OpenVSX!

Easy setup

If you'd like to skip some of the below setup, you can use one of the project templates. They are pretty much the same except for one or two files. After you fork them, you can open the project in Codespaces using the devcontainer.json. Keep in mind that a lot of the graphical features in the main panel will only work in VSCode on your computer, not in the web browser, but you can still do basic debugging. If you connect VSCode to Codespaces, all the features will work correctly, it just might be slow since the debugger has to run on the remote machine.

C Template Assembly Template

Opening the template in Codespaces

  1. Choose either the C or the Assembly template.
  2. Click the green "use this template" button at the top right corner
  3. Give your repo an interesting name and configure other settings, then create it!
  4. Click the green "<> Code" button and on the "Codespaces" tab, click "Create codespace on main"
  5. Wait for a somewhat lengthy amount of time... (Click the "Show Logs" link to see progress)
  6. The project will open in VSCode in your browser. This works fine, but only good for basic debugging
  7. Please click the "CC65 - Run" tab and note that it is blank. This is a limitation of the browser vscode. Connecting from your computer does not have this limitation.

Viewing the Codespaces desktop for debugging

  1. In the browser or local VSCode, go to the "PORTS" tab on the bottom of the screen and select port 6080, then click the globe button which appears. This will launch novnc in your browser.
  2. Click the connect button, and use a password of "vscode". This will get you to the desktop where your program will appear.
  3. Go to the debugging tab in VSCode, and select the first launch target in the dropdown next to the green play button.
  4. Click the green play button. Debugging starts. You can see the VICE window on the novnc desktop.

Remotely connecting to Codespaces with VSCode app on your computer

  1. Go to Codespaces. You will see your container there.
  2. Click the three dots button on your container, and select open in VSCode. Your browser will ask to open VSCode URI.
  3. Accept opening the link in VSCode, and it will load up. You're done. Magic. You can also open the novnc port locally, and there's also port 64378, which is for audio. You will need a Mumble client to access this port. By default there is no password.

Full Setup

If you'd like to run a project entirely from your computer without Codespaces or devcontainers, you can also do that. This way is probably better if you want to get more serious with your development. To make sure all the features work, you'll want to install VICE 3.8 or later. A modified build of CC65 for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS is already included.

Windows-specific instructions

You will need to install VICE 3.8 or later and make. A modified build of CC65 is included. The easiest way to install VICE to your PATH is to use Chocolatey.

# Make sure you use an Administrator shell!

# Skip this command if you have Chocolatey already.
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

# Install the packages
choco install --version 3.8.0 winvice-nightly
choco install make

# This isn't required, but installing it will make C development a little easier.
# If you install this you should also install the llvm-vs-code-extensions.vscode-clangd
# VSCode extension from the Marketplace.
choco install llvm

Make sure these directories are not on your PATH. They will break the Makefile:

C:\Program Files\Git\bin
C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin

These directories are okay:

C:\Program Files\Git\cmd

Mac-specific instructions

You will need to install VICE. The easiest way to do this is with Brew.

brew install vice

Alternatively, use the official release from Sourceforge. You will need to point the viceDirectory setting to the bin path. So if you dropped the folder in Applications, that would look similar to this:

/Applications/vice-arm64-gtk3.8.0/bin

You may also want to add that path to your PATH so you can use tools like c1541 in your Makefile.

Linux-specific instructions (Debian [and probably also Ubuntu])

You will need to install VICE 3.8 or later and make. A modified build of CC65 is included.

To install VICE 3.8 before it is packaged for your distribution, you will need to build VICE from source, to do that, download the source from the VICE website, then follow the below steps:

sudo apt install build-essential subversion dos2unix xa65 automake autoconf zip
sudo apt build-dep vice
cd vice-3.8.0
./autogen.sh
./configure
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

The last two commands will take a while, but afterwards VICE should be installed.

Project Configuration

After installing go to your launch.json and create a new section using the snippet. If you don't have a launch.json, the "create a launch.json file" link in the debug section should create a simple one.

Obsolete settings:

Required settings for both launch and attach:

Required for attach mode only:

Required for launch mode only:

Other shared settings:

There are also some user settings to note:

You may have some problems with autostart-warp working correctly. The way VICE detects this may be to blame. To turn it off, just add +warp and +autostart-warp to your emulatorArgs:

{
    ...
    "emulatorArgs": [
        "+autostart-warp", "+warp",
        "-model", "ntsc"
    ]
    ...
}

Changes needed to your Makefile

You will need to tell the linker that you want a debug file and a map file. You would add the following options to your linker:

-g -Wl "--mapfile,build/PROGRAMNAME.map" -Wl "--dbgfile,build/PROGRAMNAME.dbg"

And the following to your compiler:

--debug-tables "FILENAME.tab"

Make sure that the paths on the files are in the same folder and have the same name (minus the extension, of course) as your main program!

If you have included any optimizations (-Osir) you should probably turn those off, however, effort has been made to trace some of them.

Please also note the mk.sh and mk.bat. These will help you run make (or anything else with minor modifications) from the proper context outside of vscode, so that you use the builtin cc65 compiler when possible, instead of the one installed on your machine.

Building the extension

You will need node >=13, vscode >=1.42, pnpm >=5.5, Python 3 (to generate the font), and Subversion. Jest Test Explorer extension is also recommended.

For more details about what is needed to build, please look at the Dockerfile

To test:

pnpm install --shamefully-hoist
pnpm build:full
pnpm test

To build, run the following commands:

pnpm install --shamefully-hoist
pnpm build:full

If you want to debug the extension, use the Extension + Server debug target in VSCode after running the build commands above at least once. This will start two debug sessions. You will need to restart the Server if you change any code called by the main debug session process. Basically anything referenced by src/dbg/runtime.ts.

You will need to restart the Extension if you change anything in the Extension which is not UI code. All the UI side code is located under src/webviews/index.ts since there is only one screen at the moment. All the non-UI code is under src/ext.

If you change UI code while debugging, it will automatically be reloaded. However you may need to close the webview and restart the cc65-vice session to get it to reappear correctly.

Some other package.json scripts of note:

Contributing

All work happens on master, and releases are merged from pull requests using Google's Release Please. Commit messages should start with fix: for bug fixes or feat: for new features, which will appear as bullet points in the changelogs. You can only have one fix: or feat: per commit message, and it must be on the first line. Do not manually edit the version or the CHANGELOG, unless your name is empathicqubit. Breaking changes should use fix!: and feat!:. Force pushes occassionally happen on master because I forget to add the tags to my commit messages.

Usage in Vim with Vimspector (experimental)

Download the file vimspector-gadget.json from the Release page and run a command similar to the following:

.vim/plugged/vimspector/install_gadget.py --enable-custom ./vimspector-gadget.json

An example .vimspector.json is included in the example projects. Note that you will need to set build.skip to true.

Using Mesen-X with NES

To use Mesen-X with NES, download Mesen-X and set your cc65vice.mesenDirectory setting to the path where Mesen-X is. The file should be named Mesen.exe. Then add NES to your targets in your Makefile:

TARGETS := nes

Keep in mind that stdio is not implemented correctly, so printf and file operations will not work. This is a limitation of the NES platform in CC65.

Additional Credits (see also LICENSE.md)