Yes, as you have discovered, Microchip has removed the EEPROM read/write functions for the PIC18 family of microcontrollers in the MPLAB X IDE. It has left the macros as empty shells (EEPROM_READ(), eeprom_read(), e.t.c) which will not throw a compiler error/warning, but won't actually do anything!
pic18.h suggests that if #if _EEPROMSIZE > 0 && defined(_PLIB) is true then the macros will be filled in, yet by manually adding the PLIB macro definition, the compiler then complained about not being able to find plib.h. I could not find a suitable place to download "plib" from.
One option is to revert back to direct register manipulation to perform EEPROM reads/writes (see page 75 of http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/39626e.pdf for EEPROM register definitions for one particular PIC18 micro). I have written the following functions which abstract that away and provide similar functionality to what Microchip removed:
//! @brief Reads a single byte of data from the EEPROM.
//! @param address The EEPROM address to write the data to (note that not all
//! 16-bits of this variable may be supported).
//! @returns The byte of data read from EEPROM.
//! @warning This function does not return until read operation is complete.
uint8_t Eeprom_ReadByte(uint16_t address)
{
// Set address registers
EEADRH = (uint8_t)(address >> 8);
EEADR = (uint8_t)address;
EECON1bits.EEPGD = 0; // Select EEPROM Data Memory
EECON1bits.CFGS = 0; // Access flash/EEPROM NOT config. registers
EECON1bits.RD = 1; // Start a read cycle
// A read should only take one cycle, and then the hardware will clear
// the RD bit
while(EECON1bits.RD == 1);
return EEDATA; // Return data
}
//! @brief Writes a single byte of data to the EEPROM.
//! @param address The EEPROM address to write the data to (note that not all
//! 16-bits of this variable may be supported).
//! @param data The data to write to EEPROM.
//! @warning This function does not return until write operation is complete.
void Eeprom_WriteByte(uint16_t address, uint8_t data)
{
// Set address registers
EEADRH = (uint8_t)(address >> 8);
EEADR = (uint8_t)address;
EEDATA = data; // Write data we want to write to SFR
EECON1bits.EEPGD = 0; // Select EEPROM data memory
EECON1bits.CFGS = 0; // Access flash/EEPROM NOT config. registers
EECON1bits.WREN = 1; // Enable writing of EEPROM (this is disabled again after the write completes)
// The next three lines of code perform the required operations to
// initiate a EEPROM write
EECON2 = 0x55; // Part of required sequence for write to internal EEPROM
EECON2 = 0xAA; // Part of required sequence for write to internal EEPROM
EECON1bits.WR = 1; // Part of required sequence for write to internal EEPROM
// Loop until write operation is complete
while(PIR2bits.EEIF == 0)
{
continue; // Do nothing, are just waiting
}
PIR2bits.EEIF = 0; //Clearing EEIF bit (this MUST be cleared in software after each write)
EECON1bits.WREN = 0; // Disable write (for safety, it is re-enabled next time a EEPROM write is performed)
}
