Re: Best microcontroller with Linux development tools

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:41:29 -0500, Bob11 wrote:
Does anyone have any experience, or know of any vendors, of small
microcontroller development tools than run natively on Linux? I'm
looking
at processors in the 8051/AVR/Z8 etc class.
[snip]

Thanks, Mike, to the link for Rowley. They're the only vendor I've seen so
far that actually mentions Linux support for a debugging/programming JTAG
probe. They deserve a good evaluation.

Thanks, DJ, for the reminder about Renesas. I've checked out the KPIT
toolchain before but completely forgot about them; I'll have to take
another look at the Renesas parts.

And thanks, Neil, for your list of tools you've used. I'm a vi guy myself
:-) and find the vi Makefile cvs/subversion toolchain to be faster for
development than IDEs also. I do like the IDEs for debugging, though,
particular with parts that support ISE/JTAG. Debugging with scope probes
gets old, and printf is a pain with 1K of code space. It's nice to have
views of all the internal registers and pertinent memory locations updated
in real time as you step through code. GDB is OK, but IDE debugging is
faster IMO.

What started this quest on my part was a recent experience with a Silicon
Labs development kit. I've been using SDCC to code for a Cypress FX2 and
haven't had any major issues, since I'm using my own routines to write to
an onboard FLASH and Cypress documents everything fairly well. So, I
thought I'd stay with this (ancient) family for the 'jellybean processor'
I need for a number of other switch/lamp PCBs on some upcoming products.
I bought the Silicon Labs development kit ($69) and it come with a USB
debug pod. SDCC is even listed on their list of 3rd party vendors. What a
disaster, though. I found an 'ec2/ec3' driver on sourceforge, but it
completely locks up the USB stack, seriously enough that I have to reboot.
Silicon Labs apparently believes the C2/C3 debugging protocol is a state
secret, so there is no way to write a decent driver other than through
reverse-engineering the Windows IDE. Well, I don't have Windows, and I
don't have time for reverse-engineering a debug probe. Going down the list
of 3rd party vendors (14 in all), not *one* of them supports
debugging/programming on Linux. Compiling, yes, a few. USB debug support,
none. Hell, I'd write the code myself if there was actually some useful
SiLabs documentation on the protocol.

Anyway, looks like I won't be using Silicon Labs in future designs. The
AVR parts, or perhaps Renesas, are starting to look like the best option
for being able to do real coding and in-circuit programming on Linux.

Thanks again.



.

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