Best microcontroller with Linux development tools

On 2008-03-27, Bob11 <nospam@tigercatdesigns.com> wrote:
>>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.

FWIW, I've never seen anything but positive comments about them
in the MSP430 mailing list.  Their prices sure look reasonable,
and supporting Linux wins them points in my book.

> 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,

By "IDE for debugging" do you mean a GUI source-level debugger?
If that's what you're after, then there are a number of GUIs
for gdb that will work with any target supported by gdb.  I've
used both the Insight and DDD GUIs to debug embedded stuff
using gdb, though I find gdb's command line interface to be a
lot easier to use.  It's been a long time since I've used gdb
-- I don't find debuggers very useful for embedded real-time
stuff anyway.

-- 
Grant

Bob11 schrieb:
> 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. I'm not looking for embedded
> [...]

There are native delevopment tools for 8051 derivatives available:

   SDCC: http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/ - a complete C compiler
ASEM-51: http://plit.de/asem-51/ - a good 8051 macro assembler

However you might notice that you will have no way to program your
particular chip. It depends on the devcie you use.
If your target board allows upload via RS232 of some kind, you can use
any terminal program (or even shell scripting).

I personally use a development board which runs with Tasking Monitor -
and you can communicate with that via RS232, thus uploading your
firmware to SRAM.

Devices which allow programming their FLASH via UART and RS232, should
do as well. A project of mine used a T89C51CC02 controller by ATmel and
I could upload my Firmware using ATmel's UART bootloader software.

HTH,
Matthias
-- 
Matthias Arndt <marndt@asmsoftware.de>
PGP-Key: http://www.final-memory.org/files/marndt.asc   ICQ: 40358321
>>> Jabber: simonsunnyboy@jabber.ccc.de <<<

On Mar 26, 4:27=A0pm, DJ Delorie <d...@delorie.com> wrote:
> I'm biased because I wrote the port for it, but the Renesas
> R8C/M16C/M32C family is supported by gcc from the FSF, and I have
> tools that can program it via usb or serial. =A0

Did they release the low-level info for their on-chip debugging
abilities? One thing that bugs me is that most companies don't
publicly release this kind of info and it becomes difficult to
leverage gdb to do in-circuit debugging. Freescale is the only 8 or 16
bit company I know of that documents their on-chip debug module (BDM).
In the 32 bit world you can find docs on Arm's EmbeddedICE, but it's a
real bear to work with.

Atmel release the API of their JTAGICE mkII emulator, which is kind-of
good enough, but there's still some holes in their documentation.
Since they provide great official (not unofficial like most) support
for GNU tools on Windows, most AVR users just use their free IDE and
toolset. They do have "some" linux support, but they do not support
gdb on any platform as far as I know (though their Windows debugger is
excellent).

Aside from Atmel, I don't know of any company that offers free (and
unrestricted) official support for gcc. Please chime in if anyone
knows of others. I don't claim to know them all, but I'd like to :-)

Eric

Eric <englere_geo@yahoo.com> writes:
> Did they release the low-level info for their on-chip debugging
> abilities?

For the larger chips (m16c, m32c) they use a software monitor, a kinda
debug stub.  You could put gdb's stub in there too, or redboot.  I
don't know about the r8c's - most of them don't have enough flash to
hold a stub and a program, but you could squeeze them in.

They certainly did publish enough information to write said stub,
though.  All the debug hooks and such are documented in the chip
specs.

If there's something in the MODE pin that's a hardware debug, it might
be documented, but I haven't looked yet.  I can ask, I suppose.

On 26 Mar, 20:41, "Bob11" <nos...@tigercatdesigns.com> 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. I'm not looking for embedded
> Linux--I'm looking for a C compiler/IDE package that allows me to develop
> for that processor on my Linux workstation. I need the processor in my
> design for simple switch-scanning LED-lighting functions, ie basic GPIO,
> and production quantities are in the low thousands/year, so feature set or
> absolute cost is not a big issue. The processor just needs to be available
> from US distribution channels. I already have licenses for Eagle, VariCAD
> and Xilinx tools, so I'm fine with a commercial closed-source solution,
> particular if it comes with reasonable support. I can even live without
> the IDE as long as it has a good compiler and supports USB or serial-based
> debugging/programming.
>
> Yes, I know this is Usenet, but I'd rather not get into a
> Windows/Mac/Linux debate. I just prefer Linux. So, if anyone has used, can
> recommend, or can just point me to a vendor of microcontrollers or a third
> party toolset vendor that has a native Linux toolkit/programming
> development kit, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

I think that all of the Rowley Associates' tools for the MSP430, AVR,
ARM, etc. are available for both Windows and Linux.

Leon

"Bob11" <nospam@tigercatdesigns.com> writes:

> Does anyone have any experience, or know of any vendors, of small
> microcontroller development tools than run natively on Linux? I'm

That would include most gcc based toolchains. I've also used gpasm
(PIC) assembler under Linux.

> particular if it comes with reasonable support. I can even live without
> the IDE as long as it has a good compiler and supports USB or serial-based
> debugging/programming. 

I use emacs (and make) as my IDE for most of my programming. As for
device programming I'm use a self-made programmer.

Petter

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