I warn anybody before using ARM Keil 4.13a. It generates defective code. I have spent several hours with debugging a code that has been already worked. The problem affects local variables of functions and passing arguments. Code has been wrongly compiled without any optimization. I have no courage and time to test optimizations.
I also encourage Keil not to publish Keil 4.13a any more.
Keil 4.12 seems to be OK.
Yes, but remember that the original post had the subject line "Avoid using Keil 4.13a - it generates defective code" which is claiming a bug with the compiler. It really is important to perform a careful analysis before making an error report. A large percentage of developers will probably never see a true compiler bug, that isn't in reality a misunderstanding of what the compiler is expected to do.
All,
Keil support have provided me with DLLs that address the debugger issue above (wrong value displayed). I believe they will make them available to others as well.
So we know that there are debugger issues.
Therefore, to prove a compiler code generation bug, the OP needs to demonstrate both that it's not his own code that's faulty and that it's not a result of the known debugger issues...
To continue the car analogy, a false (low) reading on the speedometer would give the impression that the car's performance was poor...
I had a problem today, whereby a previously working bit of code "stopped working" when compiled with 4.13. I started the debugger and stepped through the code, and found that a local variable was being stored in r9, we then had a switch statement switching on this "local variable". Once it got to the correct case, the code then passed this local variable into another function. On single stepping we found that the compiler was using r9 during the switch statement to determine which case was a match. This then meant that when the "local" was passed into the function, r9 had become corrupted, and therefore it had incorrect functionality. Recompiled the code with aditional debug code, but it always failed in the same way. Loaded 4.11 back onto the PC, and recompiled the code, and the exact same code now functions as expected! I understand what people say about not being able to trust the debugger to report values correctly, but the code did not work with 4.13, but worked fine with 4.11. This seems to be similar to the original post on this thread reporting an issue with using local variables and passing them into functions. Think i am going to stick with 4.11 until I hear more from Keil.
Steve F,
This is very worrying indeed. You did provide Keil with sample code, right...?
Hi Steve,
please send a small test application to Keil Support (support.intl@keil.com). It is more or less impossible to provide a workaround or fix for such problems without taking a look to the code and analyzing it!
Best regards, Alexander Zaech
Alexander,
Man, I knew it !
Could you let us know whether you receive anything from Steve F and (more importantly) whether it is a genuine issue.
Thanks.
Similarly for Jaroslav Fojtík (the OP) and/or Martin Cupak...
It seems that false (?) bug reporting is the new form of trolling...
*#@&ing £%~/ers need to get a life!
For what it's worth, I'm still using 4.13a on our project thats in development (NXP LPC3250, mix of ARM and THUMB mode). The resultant binary image has 300K bytes of code. Using 'go for broke' style optimisations.
So far, I'm not aware of any bad behaviour that is compiler related.
Me neither! F@%$ing morons!
"F@%$ing morons!"
Lack of evidence of bugs is not evidence of lack of bugs. I don't think there exist any C/C++ compiler that doesn't contain at least one source code processing or code-generating bug, and no runtime library without a bug. The question is just how easy it is to trig the error.
"Lack of evidence of bugs is not evidence of lack of bugs."
True. It's one of those situations where you can prove there is a fault, but not prove there is not.
However, the bug that was being described seemed quite fundamental - And the chance of hitting a fundamental error of that nature would be quite high with a reasonably large project.
I have seen no sufficient evidence of a problem on this thread and Keil have not confirmed that there is any such problem.
So on balance, it would surely be preferable to stick with Keil's current release (rather than go back to something that Keil knows created bad code) until someone comes up with a substantiated and compelling reason not to use it.
No - as already noted, it is very old!
I think it's already been mentioned in this thread that it is a common response of a less-experienced developer to be quick to blame the compiler...
Which is one of the reasons why it's so important to have definite, compelling evidence of a bug.
Indeed!
And the alleged bugs may, indeed, be there - but, as you say, we have (as yet) seen no sufficient evidence of a problem on this thread...