Arm Debugger

Overview

The complete documentation for Arm® Debugger and the other Keil® Studio extensions is available on Arm Developer.

The Arm Debugger extension provides access to the Arm Debugger engine for Visual Studio Code by implementing the Microsoft Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP). The Arm Debugger engine supports connections to physical and virtual targets:

• Physical targets. Either through external debug probes such as the Arm's ULINK™ family of debug probes, or through on-board low-cost debugging such as ST-Link or CMSIS-DAP based debug probes.
• Virtual targets. Using Fixed Virtual Platform models (FVPs).

See the Arm Debugger Release Note for an overview of each release.

We recommend installing the Keil Studio Pack for Visual Studio Code Desktop to quickly set up your environment. You can then import a solution example from keil.arm.com, download a μVision project from keil.arm.com, create a solution from scratch, or convert an existing μVision project.

The Arm Debugger extension works with the Arm CMSIS Solution (Identifier: arm.cmsis-csolution), the Arm Device Manager (Identifier: arm.device-manager), and the Arm Virtual Hardware (Identifier: arm.virtual-hardware) extensions.

Supported features

The Arm Debugger extension allows you to:

• Load images (for example, .elf, .axf, or .bin files) and debug information as per the DWARF Debugging Information Format Standard, up to and including version 5
• Run images
• Set breakpoints
• Do source and instruction stepping
• Access variables and registers
• View the content of memory
• Debug FVPs
• Access the CLI using the Debug Console

Debug configuration support

The Arm Debugger engine supports debug connections based on:

• The debug setup with CMSIS-Pack
• The integrated configuration database (configdb)

Supported architectures and processors

• Armv6-M architecture

  Cortex®-M0, Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M1, Arm SecurCore® SC000

• Armv7-M architecture

  Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7, Arm SecurCore SC300

• Armv8-M architecture

  Cortex-M23, Cortex-M33, Cortex-M35P

• Armv8.1-M architecture

  Cortex-M55, Cortex-M85

Supported debug probes

• Arm ULINK family
• ST-LINK from STMicroelectronics
• Probes based on the CMSIS-DAP debug adapter protocol v1.x and v2.x

Limitations

Some capabilities of the Arm Debugger engine that are not yet exposed in Visual Studio Code include:

• CoreSight™ trace
• Symmetric and asymmetric multicore debug
• RTOS awareness

Use the Arm Debugger extension

See the documentation for the Arm Debugger extension to run a project on your hardware and start a debug session.

Pre-releases

The Arm Debugger extension introduces pre-releases from version 1.3.0. It follows the recommended versioning scheme Major.Minor.Patch with:

• Arm Debugger extension release: Minor is an even number, for example 1.2.0.
• Arm Debugger extension pre-release: Minor is an odd number, for example 1.3.0.

Submit feedback or report issues

To submit feedback or report issues on the Arm Debugger extension, please use GitHub issues in the extension repository.