IDE Recommendation

Not sure if this is the right place for this or not, so excuse me if I have not "chosen wisely."

I'm a hobbyist working on a project that I MAY productize and try to sell. I have begun with the mbed platform of embedded boards. However I have quickly grown tired of their online compiler with no debugging capability. So, now I'm looking for recommendations on good (and reasonably priced) IDE options for ARM embedded development.

I have asked this question elsewhere and have not gotten any really complete answers.

One tool that I have looked at is Sourcery CodeBench from Mentor Graphics. It looks promising but I've not found anyone that has used it. I have gotten a recommendation on Rowley CrossStudio. I have been using the free version of LPCXpresso but it does not optimize code very well and C++ code struggles to fit on my NXP ARM Cortex M3 LPC1347 based board.

So, what are everyone's feelings on development tools? I need to keep a keen eye toward price because at this point this is just a hobby and I can't afford to spend thousands on development tools.

Thanks in advance!

Parents
  • As Drew said, the Keil tools are very good, as are the IAR ones (and both have free size limited options). Eclipse is certainly becoming the defacto standard, so it my be worth going through the pain of learning that as a base IDE.

    mbed is great, and the fact you can export programs from the online environment to the compile and debug with Keil/ARM/GCC has been a major step forward. If you're using the LPC1768 then I'd recommend getting an mbed for rapid prototyping as all the driver code (GPIO, I2C, SPI, USB, etc.) is supplied as part of the mbed environment.

    I wrote about getting a native development for the LPC1768 using the mbed as a target but without their libs, but using CMSIS:

    Sticky Bits » Blog Archive » Native C/C++ Application development for the mbed using CMSIS-DAP

    For code development I use Sublime Text ( Sublime Text: The text editor you'll fall in love with ) which is not free (though is free to evaluate). It has some major benefits for code development, significantly (for me) it's cross platform (Win, Linux and Mac - I use all three) and can open a file directory structure and read *ANY* file, including raw binary/XML/Python/Ruby beyond the basic needs of C/C++/Makefiles. Give it a try.

    I try and do most of my dev at the command line but using a TDD approach based on the Unity test framework, which allows Test-On-Target for embedded C applications. Check out Sticky Bits » Blog Archive » Test Driven Development (TDD) with the mbed

    Hope this helps,

    Niall.

Reply
  • As Drew said, the Keil tools are very good, as are the IAR ones (and both have free size limited options). Eclipse is certainly becoming the defacto standard, so it my be worth going through the pain of learning that as a base IDE.

    mbed is great, and the fact you can export programs from the online environment to the compile and debug with Keil/ARM/GCC has been a major step forward. If you're using the LPC1768 then I'd recommend getting an mbed for rapid prototyping as all the driver code (GPIO, I2C, SPI, USB, etc.) is supplied as part of the mbed environment.

    I wrote about getting a native development for the LPC1768 using the mbed as a target but without their libs, but using CMSIS:

    Sticky Bits » Blog Archive » Native C/C++ Application development for the mbed using CMSIS-DAP

    For code development I use Sublime Text ( Sublime Text: The text editor you'll fall in love with ) which is not free (though is free to evaluate). It has some major benefits for code development, significantly (for me) it's cross platform (Win, Linux and Mac - I use all three) and can open a file directory structure and read *ANY* file, including raw binary/XML/Python/Ruby beyond the basic needs of C/C++/Makefiles. Give it a try.

    I try and do most of my dev at the command line but using a TDD approach based on the Unity test framework, which allows Test-On-Target for embedded C applications. Check out Sticky Bits » Blog Archive » Test Driven Development (TDD) with the mbed

    Hope this helps,

    Niall.

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