C++ Support in Altium Designer

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As software development technology has progressed there has been a distinct trend towards higher-level, more abstract software development languages and tools – from machine code, to assembly language, to procedural languages to object oriented languages. Altium Designer already supports software development using C, which is a procedural language. With the Summer 09 release, support for software development using C++ (a higher level language) is now provided. This support includes full compilation and debugging capabilities.

A new document type – C++ Source Document (*.cpp) – is available from the File»New sub-menu, and full syntax support for this new language (labeled C++(Builder)) is provided, in line with all of Altium Designer's coding-aware editors.

Develop your software at the highest level using Altium Designer's new native support for C++.

New C++ compilers have been introduced for all 32-bit processor toolchains, for example cp3000 for the TSK3000A. The C++ compiler in each case can be regarded as a preprocessor, or front-end, which accepts as input C++ source files or sources using C++ language features – essentially files with extensions *.cc, *.cpp, or *.cxx. The output of the C++ compiler is an intermediate C file (*.ic), which is subsequently passed as input to the standard C compiler for the toolchain.

C++ compiler options are defined on the Compiler Options tab of the Options for Embedded Project dialog (Project»Project Options with the C++ document active). Simply expand the C++ Compiler entry and define options on the various sub-pages as required.

Access and define options for the C++ compiler in much the same way you would for the standard C compiler.

More information on the C++ compiler and the C++ language implementation (including specific features) can be found in the embedded tools reference and tools user guide for each 32-bit processor:

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