In this article I will show you how to use Eclipse to cross compile a program and run it on a development board. I am running the Helios release of Eclipse on Ubuntu 10.04 but it will work as described on a wide variety of versions of Linux and Eclipse. My target board has an ARM 926JE core and I am using an Ångström toolchain and root file system (http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/) but once again the information is generic and should work with pretty much any embedded Linux target and toolchain.
Most people working with embedded Linux are using Eclipse as the IDE, but not always taking full advantage of it. In this article I will look at one handy plug-in: the Remote System Explorer or RSE. RSE gives you three things: it allows you to explore the files on the target board, meaning that you can copy files over using drag and drop and, the killer app for me, you can edit a file on the target just by double clicking on it. The second feature is a remote shell so that you can run a terminal window in Eclipse - a marginal benefit in my opinion.