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To those with experience,
For several months I have had the misfortune of working with FreeScale's CodeWearier ( err ... CodeWarrior ) and between myself and other team members using the same devel platform, we estimate we're spending well over 50% of our debug time battling the unreliability of the Codewarrior debug environment. I've dealt with several IDEs/Debuggers in my day, and this one is without question the worst.
At this juncture in the project, we are seriously considering changing our devel/debug tool and having been a long time Keil user and being familiar with the overall reliability of the uVision products ( from my experience anyway ), I'm wondering if I'm going to have any better luck with a Keil solution.
Some specifics: We using the Kinetis K60 CPU line, specifically a K60FX512. We're building our application on top of the MQX RTOS. MQX component used are: RTSC, SHELL, MFS, and HDK for simple host mass storage support.
Does Keil support a reliable and robust devel environment for the above. I'm looking for and expecting thing like:
* If the debugger accepts a break point on a certain line, I EXPECT it to actually break when execution encounters that line ... instead of just ignoring the break point or, as is often the case with CodeWearier, locking the entire IDE and requiring a complete restart of the application.
* If colored syntax options are supported, I EXPECT it to properly apply the coloring ... instead of randomly loosing track of identifier types/scopre and just giving up.
* If I have a structure member on and odd 16-bit boundary and the compiler has all the information to know this, I EXPECT it NOT to use access instructions that assume 32-bit alignment.
In general, if we switch to the Keil ARM-MDK for the K60 & MQX, will I return from the brink of suicide, or is it going to introduce a whole new host of problems to be discovered only after investing the money and time porting the projects over to this new platform ?
My apologies for sounding so cynical, but I'm at wit's end with FreeScale's solution ( if you can call it that ), and am seeking honest opinions from people with experience with Kiel and K60/MQX.
Thanks for any adivce you have to offer.
RW
Robert;
I don't see the Kinetis K60FX in the Keil supported list. I thought it was a Cortex M4 device but I do not see Keil support.
Suggest that you contact your silver tongued salesman at Keil for future information. Maybe the Realview tools directly from ARM might better support this device.
They will tell you to download the MDK evaluation tools and play with smaller code to see if it will satisfy your needs. If your company is a good prospect, they might let you use a full MDK-Pro toolset for 30 days. Best to talk with sales.
So I really have no good or bad information.
Bradford
at Keil for future information
I meant further!
You should talk to your local Keil sales office/distributor. Get them to come in to discuss your requirements and demonstrate the tools to you. Ask them the hard questions.
If you're serious, they should be able to give you a short-term licence to try out...
Thank you gentlemen. Can you tell me who the local sales rep is in the Minneapolis area ?
I just called the Dallas office, speaking first to sales and then posed a few questions to tech support outlining my migration goals.
Together we devised a plan and they sound more than willing to help me through an evaluation process. Most important in this process is migrating one of our actual projects to the Keil platform. Once I can do that and get a clean build, a couple simple debug tests will yield a verdict.
I have nothing but respect for the Keil tools and sure wish I could have steered the blind in this direction when the project started and avoid all of the headaches we've had.
I was wondering how the evaluation of the Keil tools has gone? I am also a frustrated CW user and am looking at other tools. In addition to the complaints about CW, I have:
1 - When there are no errors in a build, the builder should not continue to say there is an error. It can sometimes take several re-builds with no code change for the builder to agree.
2 - With the latest CW 10.5, the IDE intermittently runs out of memory on startup. I have gone days without being able to run. I need to depend upon the IDE to start up every time. Freescale is still working on this.
3 - In the editor and the cursor is positioned in a function (perhaps as the result of a search) I want to know what function the cursor is located in without having to scroll up. The CW classic did this but I haven't figured out how to do this in the eclipse version.
4 - On the plus side I very much like the CW Outline view - which I so far haven't seen the equivalent of in Keil or IAR. The Outline view shows all of the includes, definitions, and functions in the active editor file (no matter whether the file is included the current project or not). It seems that Keil shows only the functions in a file and only if the file has been compiled.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Elizabeth