Archived the msp430_cpp repository. See "Nope, C++ won't go far with cl430". Forked it into msp430chip repository. It will contain a bunch of simple headers and scripts to help with mostly-C programming the chip.

Nope, C++ won't go far with cl430

So, this compile-time C++ code does not make sense for MSP430, because Ti compiler cl430 does not really understand these features. It does not inline and does not eliminate these templates of singleton structs with constexpr static inline methods. They bloat the program .text memory. And surely waste more cycles too.

I would like to use clang to compile this stuff. For the efficiency at compile-time, and of course for C++17 or newer, with its constexpr. But my main priority is Ti's features. I.e. I'd like to have the suggestions from cl430, and the power consumption analysis in future.

So, I am abandoning the C++ features. I'll just make a Python script to generate a header with namespaces and functions. I.e. it is just C, but with namespaces.

It optimise an inline function here either:

namespace IOPort1Ctrl {
decltype(P1DIR)&  direction_reg = P1DIR;
...
};

00fc7c:              main:
00fc7c:              .text:main:
00fc7c: 0A12             PUSH    R10
00fc7e: B240             MOV.W   #0x5a80,&WDTCTL
00fc80: 805A
00fc82: 2001
00fc84: 1F42             MOV.W   &_ZN11IOPort1Ctrl13direction_regE,R15
00fc86: 0602
00fc88: FF40             MOV.B   #0x0041,0x0000(R15)

Why not just like with MOV.W #0x5a80,&WDTCTL:

00fc88: FF40             MOV.B   #0x0041,&_ZN11IOPort1Ctrl13direction_regE

It does not get references? Ok, let's just C it with #defines:

//decltype(P1DIR)&  direction_reg = P1DIR;
#define direction_reg P1DIR

00fc7c:              main:
00fc7c:              .text:main:
00fc7c: 0A12             PUSH    R10
00fc7e: B240             MOV.W   #0x5a80,&WDTCTL
00fc80: 805A
00fc82: 2001
00fc84: F240             MOV.B   #0x0041,&P1DIR

C++ programming on msp430

A bunch of C++ function templates, some namespaces and classes to work with msp430.h and msp430g2102.h. There are simple templates to deal with register bit masks, and C++ wrappers around the Ti header declarations.

Currently, it's just a bunch of tests with C++ for embedded programming, dumped in reg_funcs.hpp. It it turns out to be handy, I'll separate things into 3 parts: general logic & register & bit field handling, msp430 chips, and the launchpad board.

This code profits from compile-time features, i.e. at least C++17 would be nice to have. But the Ti compiler cl430 currently supports only C++14. I try to keep the code to minimum. So, if something is not easy to express well purely in C++, I will generate the code, most likely with Python. I.e. the goal is to have a set of C++ idioms that cover the programming of msp430 well. But the user of the library does not care from where came the code for these idioms: from C++ compile-time (aka metaprogramming) or it is generated as "hardcoded" by a script. It would be nice to have some programmable description of the chip and the board ("datasheet API") as the input to the code-generating program.

To compile in C++

A proper project template is a TODO.

I just modified an example C project in Ti Composer Studio Theia: in Debug/makefile all .c files to .cpp. The Ti compiler cl430 does have an option --c++14 for C++. But it is used automatically for .cpp endings.

Build in Debug/ by simply calling make.

And program the chip (MSP430G2553 in my case) with mspdebug:

mspdebug rf2500 "prog msp430g2xx2_1_vlo.cpp.out"

I run the Code Composer Studio Theia on Ubuntu Linux, and it does not recognize the connected board. But mspdebug works fine.