Posted by jim.fred on 2015-08-10 01:50

Is there a way, in Eclipse, to start an interactive cmd prompt (on Windows) with the same environment as the build environment?

Why I would want to do this and what I’d do with it:
Last week, I had a problem on Win7-64 where other tools in the PATH variable were preventing a successful build. I’ve resolved that problem but I’d be able to more quickly solve similar problems with an interactive cmd prompt. I’d like to be able to run commands like “make -v” or “arm-none-eabi-g++ -v” or “where arm-none-eabi-g++”. For an error like ‘arm-none-eabi-g++ not found in PATH’, I’d be able to determine why it wasn’t found in the PATH.

Things I’ve tried:

• Adding a Pre-build step to do a ‘start “cmd.exe”’. This will open a window with a cmd prompt with the build environment used by Eclipse to build. This works but I’m thinking that there’s a better way without mucking with the build settings.
• Add an Eclipse External Tool Configuration to execute command ‘C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe’. This will launch a cmd prompt in the Eclipse Console window but doesn’t work because the environment isn’t the same e.g., doesn’t know ‘make’ or ‘arm-none-eabi-g++’.