Black Magic Probe for RP Pico under Visual Studio Code

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I’m about to start using a RP Pico for the first time and am looking at debugging options for C/C++ coding. The Black Magic Probe looks like it might be a good way to go, but I have some questions that I can’t find direct answers for and hoping some of you may be able to help:

  1. Have you used the Black Magic Probe with the Pico (or your own RP2040 design) and did it work OK?

  2. Would you recommend using the Black Magic Probe over a Picoprobe (i.e., another Pico configured as a SWD debug probe)?

  3. Can the Black Magic Probe be used OK from Visual Studio Code? I can’t find anything that directly says this will work, so I am assuming that since this probe is a GDB server, the standard VS Code C/C++ extension will work – is that true, or is there another extension that should be used?

Any advice and/or links to any other info would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Peter

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Welcome Peter!!

Breaking the question down, are you looking for a general purpose debugging tool or just something for the Pico?
Addressing your questions … and asking a couple more that might help you narrow your decision down:

I personally havent had to use a dedicated debugging tool outside of some print statements and methodically working through the hardware setup.

If you are just after debugging on a Pico, I’d head for using another Pico (In stock and not super expensive)

It should be no worries at all, alongside GregO’s post on the other topic this extension should fix you up: GDB Debugger - Beyond - Visual Studio Marketplace

For furture readers and anyone interesting here’s a link to the section on debugging on the Pico: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with-pico.pdf#swd-debug

Keen to see what option you take Peter!
Liam