Code Red for ARM Cortex M3 development - any good ?

Hi,

I am hardening up on using Code Red 4 for my new STM32L15xx based
project and I wondered if anyone here can tell me from experience
whether they have had any issues or problems with this tool set ?
From what I've seen so far it seems OK and they've been quitre
responsive by email.  Price is good so all I need is the gotcha list
to make a decision :-)

Thanks,

Mike

Mike <mikedavies621@yahoo.com> writes:

Hi,
>
> I am hardening up on using Code Red 4 for my new STM32L15xx based
> project and I wondered if anyone here can tell me from experience
> whether they have had any issues or problems with this tool set ?

We've used Code Red for quite a few projects with NXP LPC17xx series,
FreeRTOS and bare iron. We had a few issues (with linker scripts if I remember
correctly and for those the solutions from their KB and support were found easily. 

The ready FreeRTOS and other examples were very useful for us, too. The 
RedProbe+ sometimes hanged, but a reboot has always fixed it.

Great value for money in my opinion.

-- 
Mikko

On 5 Jul., 17:44, Mike <mikedavies...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am hardening up on using Code Red 4 for my new STM32L15xx based
> project and I wondered if anyone here can tell me from experience
> whether they have had any issues or problems with this tool set ?
> From what I've seen so far it seems OK and they've been quitre
> responsive by email. =A0Price is good so all I need is the gotcha list
> to make a decision :-)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike

it's gcc, so I assume it is mostly a matter of the ide

-Lasse

On 7/5/2012 10:45 PM, langwadt@fonz.dk wrote:
> On 5 Jul., 17:44, Mike <mikedavies...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am hardening up on using Code Red 4 for my new STM32L15xx based
>> project and I wondered if anyone here can tell me from experience
>> whether they have had any issues or problems with this tool set ?

why using a closed tool when there are free and open development tools
available with an increasingly active community?

>> From what I've seen so far it seems OK and they've been quitre
>> responsive by email.  Price is good so all I need is the gotcha list
>> to make a decision :-)

I was once used to program ADSP devices via VisualDSP IDE and I was
'happy' with it. At that time I was a mildly happy Windows user not
knowing anything about POSIX systems. But then I learned the advantages
and the freedom of using GNU/Linux and coming back to a closed
environment is simply not possible now.

Unless is a choice forced by some kind of partnership, I would never
choose to limit my freedom and IMO even though a FOSS toolchain may not
be the optimal solution for the target the overall benefit you get is huge.

> 
> it's gcc, so I assume it is mostly a matter of the ide

Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or logical
behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that nearly all
of them have but none of them describe formally.

IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from copyrights.

My 2 cents.

On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:03:17 +0200
alb <alessandro.basili@cern.ch> wrote:

> 
> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or logical
> behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that nearly all
> of them have but none of them describe formally.
> 
> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
> of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from copyrights.
> 
> My 2 cents.

God I love having an IDE when I'm debugging.  Visual breakpoints,
register display windows, expanded peripheral registers, all of that
stuff is golden.

And a good one also has good refactoring and code navigation tools that
work across large numbers of files.  I think you can get that level of
power from emacs or vim as well, but I haven't managed to find it in
any sensible editor.

But yes, their concept of a "project", and their firm belief that they
know better than me how to organize one, is like dental surgery on a
moving truck.

-- 
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order.  See above to fix.

On 7/6/2012 8:16 PM, Rob Gaddi wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:03:17 +0200
> alb <alessandro.basili@cern.ch> wrote:
> 
>>
>> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
>> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or logical
>> behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that nearly all
>> of them have but none of them describe formally.
>>
>> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
>> of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from copyrights.
>>
>> My 2 cents.
> 
> God I love having an IDE when I'm debugging.  Visual breakpoints,
> register display windows, expanded peripheral registers, all of that
> stuff is golden.

ever tried ddd? is a graphical front-end for command-line debuggers like
gdb and will allow you to set breakpoints, display registers, variables
and all that stuff.

> 
> And a good one also has good refactoring and code navigation tools that
> work across large numbers of files.  I think you can get that level of
> power from emacs or vim as well, but I haven't managed to find it in
> any sensible editor.

I use vim and emacs with ctags which is a very powerful yet simple tool
to index and tag all variables and functions definitions, which then can
be easily navigated.

IMO if you have to work on a large number of files regularly I would
reconsider the structure of your files :-)

> 
> But yes, their concept of a "project", and their firm belief that they
> know better than me how to organize one, is like dental surgery on a
> moving truck.
> 

Right. That is incredibly irritating.

And why reinvent the editor? each of these lousy IDE has its own editor
which is irritatingly 20 years behind emacs or vim (I use emacs with
VHDL extension and is a blessing!).

On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:16:31 -0700, Rob Gaddi wrote:

> On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:03:17 +0200 alb <alessandro.basili@cern.ch>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
>> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or
>> logical behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that
>> nearly all of them have but none of them describe formally.
>> 
>> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
>> of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from
>> copyrights.
>> 
>> My 2 cents.
> 
> God I love having an IDE when I'm debugging.  Visual breakpoints,
> register display windows, expanded peripheral registers, all of that
> stuff is golden.
> 
> And a good one also has good refactoring and code navigation tools that
> work across large numbers of files.  I think you can get that level of
> power from emacs or vim as well, but I haven't managed to find it in any
> sensible editor.
> 
> But yes, their concept of a "project", and their firm belief that they
> know better than me how to organize one, is like dental surgery on a
> moving truck.

Which is why I use Eclipse almost exclusively.  As long as it'll talk to 
the debugger, I get all the cool integrated debugging stuff, and when I 
save a file it invokes the makefile that I or a trusted coworker wrote.

-- 
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

In article <a5onj4Fm6cU1@mid.individual.net>, alessandro.basili@cern.ch 
says...
> 
> On 7/5/2012 10:45 PM, langwadt@fonz.dk wrote:
> > On 5 Jul., 17:44, Mike <mikedavies...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am hardening up on using Code Red 4 for my new STM32L15xx based
> >> project and I wondered if anyone here can tell me from experience
> >> whether they have had any issues or problems with this tool set ?
> 
> why using a closed tool when there are free and open development tools
> available with an increasingly active community?
> 
> >> From what I've seen so far it seems OK and they've been quitre
> >> responsive by email.  Price is good so all I need is the gotcha list
> >> to make a decision :-)
> 
> I was once used to program ADSP devices via VisualDSP IDE and I was
> 'happy' with it. At that time I was a mildly happy Windows user not
> knowing anything about POSIX systems. But then I learned the advantages
> and the freedom of using GNU/Linux and coming back to a closed
> environment is simply not possible now.
> 
> Unless is a choice forced by some kind of partnership, I would never
> choose to limit my freedom and IMO even though a FOSS toolchain may not
> be the optimal solution for the target the overall benefit you get is huge.

What is that overall benefit?   Better code generated more quickly?  
I've used GCC-ARM, Codewarrior, and IAR EW-ARM.   I didn't find that 
GCC-ARM produced better code more quickly than the others.
> 
> > 
> > it's gcc, so I assume it is mostly a matter of the ide
> 
> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?

IDEs are great at helping you generate complex make sequences without 
the necessity of typing file names, make commands, and options WITHOUT 
ERRORS.  If I could type 100WPM without error and had memorized all the 
library file names, and compile options, I probably would have less use 
for an IDE.
> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or logical
> behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that nearly all
> of them have but none of them describe formally.
> 
> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
> of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from copyrights.

To quote Lord Acton:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Makefiles can get you in trouble as often as they get you out of it.
Some projects, such as building a linux distro, probably need the 
flexibility of make files and the supporting linux tools.  OTOH, many 
embedded projects running on bare silicon, reduce to a make file of 
perhaps 20 or 30 lines.  For those, an IDE that allows you to pick the 
processor, organize the libraries, stack, and heap, compile, link, 
download and debug with a series of menu items can save quite a bit of 
time in looking up and correctly typing file names and make commands.

IMHO, a good IDE is a distillation of hundreds of hours spend by good 
programmers in distilling the essence of a programming environment down 
to  a series of GUI elements.  If it's done properly, you should never 
have to worry about misspelling a file name or generating a proper set 
of options for the compiler.  If it's done really well, you can override 
any of the generated options and add you own.

At some point, you have to relenquish the power that you get from 
writing your own make files,  peripheral drivers, and libraries.  People 
who use IDEs just do so a little sooner in the hope that they can spend 
more time on the problem, rather than on the process.
> 
> My 2 cents.

My son is taking an upper-division Computer Science class on operating 
systems.  So far, the instructor has insisted that all problems be 
solved using the Linux command-line interface.  It seems that the 
teaching of OS fundamentals hasn't changed much since I was a CS 
instructor in the mid 80's.   What do you want to bet that he and his 
fellow students come out of that class thinking that writing your own 
make files is the best way to program a computer?  ;-)

Mark Borgerson

In article <7ZOdnavwXKw5zWXSnZ2dnUVZ_q-dnZ2d@web-ster.com>, 
tim@seemywebsite.please says...
> 
> On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:16:31 -0700, Rob Gaddi wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:03:17 +0200 alb <alessandro.basili@cern.ch>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
> >> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or
> >> logical behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that
> >> nearly all of them have but none of them describe formally.
> >> 
> >> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy icons
> >> of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from
> >> copyrights.
> >> 
> >> My 2 cents.
> > 
> > God I love having an IDE when I'm debugging.  Visual breakpoints,
> > register display windows, expanded peripheral registers, all of that
> > stuff is golden.
> > 
> > And a good one also has good refactoring and code navigation tools that
> > work across large numbers of files.  I think you can get that level of
> > power from emacs or vim as well, but I haven't managed to find it in any
> > sensible editor.
> > 
> > But yes, their concept of a "project", and their firm belief that they
> > know better than me how to organize one, is like dental surgery on a
> > moving truck.
> 
> Which is why I use Eclipse almost exclusively.  As long as it'll talk to 
> the debugger, I get all the cool integrated debugging stuff, and when I 
> save a file it invokes the makefile that I or a trusted coworker wrote.

As long as the makefile is human readable, not a nested bunch of 
makefiles auto generated that are specific to that IDE.

One advantage I have found with makefiles properly constructed is they
are quicker and easier to port to other processors/compilers/IDE than
those autogenerated. In ten years time I cannot guarantee the
auto-generated ones will be readable by newer versions of same IDE or
compiler, not had problems with hand crafted ones.

Don't even get me started on IDEs that have 'hidden' makefiles as
part of their custom format project/workspace control file(s).

With a makefile that is only 20-30 lines long it is just as easy to
generate your own even with helper files for linker maps specific to 
processor. Too often I find autogenerated can lead to all sorts of
ancilliary issues where you spend just as long finding out the build 
did not work because of some option on menus three levels down, or the
third tab of option B, press button Z on this dialog to select this 
option. Getting auto generated is not a guarantee of success.

On a couple of IDEs with their 'integrated' project description and 
'builder' control menus, I had to specify the processor three times
for project, compiler and linker before it would work properly. This
should have been specify once and use multiple times.

The amount of time it takes to generate a hand crafted makefile for an
embedded app is not long and it will be used thousand of times more than 
edited. Unlike some IDEs at tiomes I have seen regenerate makefiles
as part of each build!


-- 
Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/>    PC Services
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/fonts/> Timing Diagram Font
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/>  GNU H8 - compiler & Renesas H8/H8S/H8 Tiny
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 03:36:37 +0100, Paul wrote:

> In article <7ZOdnavwXKw5zWXSnZ2dnUVZ_q-dnZ2d@web-ster.com>,
> tim@seemywebsite.please says...
>> 
>> On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:16:31 -0700, Rob Gaddi wrote:
>> 
>> > On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:03:17 +0200 alb <alessandro.basili@cern.ch>
>> > wrote:
>> > 
>> > 
>> >> Can someone here explain what is the gain of an IDE?
>> >> I have to say that I hardly manage to find something rational or
>> >> logical behind the IDEs, starting from the concept of 'project' that
>> >> nearly all of them have but none of them describe formally.
>> >> 
>> >> IMO the power you have with a Makefile goes way beyond the fancy
>> >> icons of an IDE, let alone that is far more portable and free from
>> >> copyrights.
>> >> 
>> >> My 2 cents.
>> > 
>> > God I love having an IDE when I'm debugging.  Visual breakpoints,
>> > register display windows, expanded peripheral registers, all of that
>> > stuff is golden.
>> > 
>> > And a good one also has good refactoring and code navigation tools
>> > that work across large numbers of files.  I think you can get that
>> > level of power from emacs or vim as well, but I haven't managed to
>> > find it in any sensible editor.
>> > 
>> > But yes, their concept of a "project", and their firm belief that
>> > they know better than me how to organize one, is like dental surgery
>> > on a moving truck.
>> 
>> Which is why I use Eclipse almost exclusively.  As long as it'll talk
>> to the debugger, I get all the cool integrated debugging stuff, and
>> when I save a file it invokes the makefile that I or a trusted coworker
>> wrote.
> 
> As long as the makefile is human readable, not a nested bunch of
> makefiles auto generated that are specific to that IDE.
> 
> One advantage I have found with makefiles properly constructed is they
> are quicker and easier to port to other processors/compilers/IDE than
> those autogenerated. In ten years time I cannot guarantee the
> auto-generated ones will be readable by newer versions of same IDE or
> compiler, not had problems with hand crafted ones.
> 
> Don't even get me started on IDEs that have 'hidden' makefiles as part
> of their custom format project/workspace control file(s).
> 
> With a makefile that is only 20-30 lines long it is just as easy to
> generate your own even with helper files for linker maps specific to
> processor. Too often I find autogenerated can lead to all sorts of
> ancilliary issues where you spend just as long finding out the build did
> not work because of some option on menus three levels down, or the third
> tab of option B, press button Z on this dialog to select this option.
> Getting auto generated is not a guarantee of success.
> 
> On a couple of IDEs with their 'integrated' project description and
> 'builder' control menus, I had to specify the processor three times for
> project, compiler and linker before it would work properly. This should
> have been specify once and use multiple times.
> 
> The amount of time it takes to generate a hand crafted makefile for an
> embedded app is not long and it will be used thousand of times more than
> edited. Unlike some IDEs at tiomes I have seen regenerate makefiles as
> part of each build!

I guess that's another reason I like Eclipse: one click, and no more 
automatically generated makefile.

I will grant you: if all you want is prototype code in a hurry, and to 
hell with anyone that has to work on things a year from now, then an IDE 
can be a boon.

But if you want code that lasts, it can be Very Bad Indeed.

-- 
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com