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Ask Slashdot: Best OSS Embedded Development Platform

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-little-help-from-my-friends dept.

AchilleTalon writes "As many of you may know, there are two main competitors on the Windows platform for embedded software development, namely IAR and Keil. By embedded development, I mean development for microprocessors like the well known 8051 and the likes, not mobile platforms which include a complete OS in first place. I am seeking for alternatives to IAR and Keil in the OSS world. Even if I can find pieces of code here and there, I haven't found yet a fully integrated development platform. Does it exist? What do you use?"

5 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. SDCC by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/snap.php#Windows

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  2. Make files and emacs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have used both IAR and KEIL, but I find using gnu tools far superior. For a number of reasons

    * Dongles (ok they have license services too, but they are always more expensive).. If you 2 years after release find you need to do a emergency fix of your released software. You start by trying to find that dongle that is needed for the software.
    * Licenses, when you need that quick fix, you can almost be certain that your license has expired
    * Integration problem on the build servers.. When you are building on your local machine everything is fine and dandy. But trying to migrate that your build farm, good luck with that
    * linker scripts.. when you need very esoteric features where you wanna lie your code in ROM, the gnu tools are just far superior in flexibility
    * and I love to type make on the prompt and build the artifact.. instead of firing up som clunky IDE

    1. Re:Make files and emacs by MadMing · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Seconded.

      I've tried a variety of IDEs, including Eclipse and Keil. My favorite is Visual Studio on Windows, and I did sort of get it integrated with the GNU tools but in the end it wasn't worth the hassle.

      I'm in the final stages of large-ish embedded ARM project cross-compiled on Linux x86 using nothing but vi, make and free CodeSourcery GCC ARM tools. All of this was on Ubuntu 12.04 running under VirtualBox on Windows or OSX.

    2. Re:Make files and emacs by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yup, GCC works great on just about all the platforms, 8 to 64 bit. There's not really much that commercial compilers give you as an advantage anymore. They don't even give you decent support which is what people claim you're paying for. GNU stuff does fall down a bit on the documentation side, mostly because it's either out of date or just so huge it's hard to get a good grasp on it (I have a cube neighbor that hates gcc since he's used to compilers that give a anual that's very specific to the chip being used).

      You also can't beat make for building stuff. I can't believe people try to use IDEs for these things, it's just so clunky. We used an IDE for a larger system at a previous company and it was just so painfully slow. With visual studio that used an external compiler, the exported makefiles were slower than the hand crafted ones, and it was just plain stupid to open the IDE just to click the make button.

      To use these tools on Windows you need to get Cygwin to make it work more smoothly. It's not the greatest system in the world but it's much better than bare bones Windows command line. If you have a choice though, it's easier to just do it all on a real unix system like Linux or Mac OS.

  3. Re:Bertos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's kinda, like, your opinion, man.

      If the dude don't know everything about everything, or knows there are somethings he don't know he can always ask, man. And people, would be all, like, hey, man, here's what I know, and he be like, thanks man. So we all happy now.