The Nios® II Software Build Tools (SBT) for Eclipse can create .hex files and other memory initialization formats for a given software application.
To generate memory initialization files, the following steps are performed:
1. Right-click on the application project.
2. Point to "Make targets" and select Build to open the Make Targets dialog box.
3. Select mem_init_generate.
4. Click Build.
5. Add the .qip file to your Quartus® II project.
6. Recompile your Quartus II project.
An issue has been identified where only "mem_init_install", and not "mem_init_generate" appears in the Make Targets dialog box.
This issue has been fixed in the Nios II Embedded Design Suite (EDS) version 11.0.