Using Microchip MPLAB^® IDE with version 8 HI-TECH C^® compilers

Please note that this will only work with the following compiler versions:

• PICC^™ v8.02 to v8.05PL2
• PICC Lite^™ v8.02 to v8.05PL2
• PICC-18^™ v8.20 to v8.35PL3
• dsPICC^™ v9.00 to v9.01

If your compiler is superior to those listed above, please refer to the MPLAB IDE integration for version 9 compilers page.

If your compiler is one of the above, then you should use our compiler-specific plugins (HI-TECH PICC toolsuite plugin, HI-TECH PICC-18 toolsuite plugin, and HI-TECH dsPICC toolsuite plugin).

These plugins are known to work with version 6.5 of MPLAB, and newer versions.

Special notes about compiler options:

Be careful when selecting your build options as some of the options offered will guarantee MPLAB reporting a build failure, as they cause the compiler to stop before completing the build.

Unless it is your explicit intention to do so, DO NOT select any of these options:

• -S (compile to assembly only)
• -PROTO (generate function prototypes)
• -PRE (generate preprocessed source)

Older HI-TECH C compilers

If your compiler is older than the versions mentioned above, then you will need to update your compiler, or use an older version of MPLAB (v5.xx) and our MPLAB v5.xx integration package.

Debugging your code

If your program has been built correctly, the compiler should generate a HEX file and a COF file. The COF file contains all the information necessary for high-level debugging and MPLAB should load this automatically after building. If you have used some other method of building your project, you can import this COF file into MPLAB at any time by selecting Import... from the File menu.

If you select the MPLAB ICD2 as a Debugger, you must inform the compiler that it should reserve memory spaces required by the ICD2 - both the HI-TECH Universal plugin and the compiler-specific plugins have options you can select for this purpose.