LPCExpresso - alternatives

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by beni0664 on Mon Nov 17 15:05:53 MST 2014
Dear NXP team,

I've selected the LPCXpresso platform to start coding on ARM cores, but unfortunately I'm not very satisfied.

I'm aware of the complexity of these cores, but this is no problem for me.

But your software is (in my opinion) in beta stadium.

Following bugs happened in my short term usage of LPCXpresso (newest version, downloaded ~7days ago):

-) GDB bug
-) Debug buttons disabled (Jump in/out/over)

These issues were discussed here, but it is annoying. Especially, because there is no "stable" fix of the button problem.
In addition, there is no "real" documentation of the chip and board libs.

I spent nearly 25% of my time on issues regarding the IDE, so I would like to use a plain Makefile, which is usually more stable compared to any Eclipse based solution.
The installer for Linux is also not working on Debian x64 (you don't support it officially, so this is not your fault).

In general: Why are ARM toolchains in such bad condition? I've never seen any bug in a AVR toolchain before, if my experience with ARM continues this way, I will switch back to AVR once and for all.


My only question regarding this post: Do you provide any toolchain (or libraries) which are based on new packages of gcc/gdb within Linux repositories?


Best regards,

Benjamin

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by Sal Ammoniac on Tue Nov 18 12:02:33 MST 2014
I've found and posted about numerous problems in LPCXpresso here, and all of them have been acknowledged and investigated by NXP Support. Many of them have been fixed in newer releases of LPCXpresso.

Don't give up hope.. Report the bugs here and there's a good chance they'll get fixed in a future release.

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by lpcxpresso-support on Tue Nov 18 08:41:00 MST 2014

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Quote:
...where the operating system is a Debian7, 32 bit version. Of course, it didn't work, I got errors when I tried to install. That's my suck, Debian is not supported.

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Please read the INSTALL.txt readme supplied in the installer directory. Follow the instructions to install additional packages and it WILL install without errors.

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by Bela on Tue Nov 18 08:09:27 MST 2014
Hi beni0664,

you're not alone with these problems. I experienced them also. About gdb: there's a separate thread about it, it seems the colleagues at NXP are working on that. It's a luck, that they also could reproduce this problem.

I experience sometimes the 'disabled debug buttons' symptom. Since I'm a novice user, I thought it is due to my misuse of the system. It seems that it isn't.
Unfortunately, as you cannot, I also can't permanently reproduce this on my Ubuntu 14.04 system. Once it comes up, there's no other solution as a cold reboot. But it begins somehow with the breakpoints, too.

I also thought that these problems are due to my 'gnome flashback'. (I don't like Unity). Therefore I tried to install LPCExpresso on another disk, where the operating system is a Debian7, 32 bit version. Of course, it didn't work, I got errors when I tried to install. That's my suck, Debian is not supported.

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by beni0664 on Tue Nov 18 05:47:04 MST 2014
HI,

the GDB issue is the one, which is handled in this forum.
I removed the --gc-sections option and it works. But it took me a while to figure that out.

The problem with the Debug buttons is, that I cannot give you a detailed explanation of how this bug happens.
Usually I need to restart the Win7 and/or LPCXpresso a few times (including some workspace/project changings).
The last time this error occured I had to restart the PC 3 times...

Regarding the installer:
I've installed all packages which were described in your README (I used the Ubuntu description, the package names were equal on Debian).
An update on this issue:
I downloaded the installer again and now it works. The error message was somehow related to Tcl/TK (as i remember).
Thanks, now I can use the IDE on my favorite OS :-)

Maybe it would be possible to provide the LPC parts of Eclipse by a plugin? Therefore you don't have to address Eclipse caused issues :-)...

It will give you updates on the GDB/debug button issues within the Linux version.


Best regards,

Benjamin

[lpcware]

Content originally posted in LPCWare by lpcxpresso-support on Tue Nov 18 04:26:58 MST 2014
I'm sorry for the problems that you are experiencing with LPCXpresso. It seems that you are being rather unlucky as we have 10s of thousands of customers who use the product every day without these issues. Having said that, very few of them use Debian x64...

To address your issues.
'GDB Crash'.
As you have not described the exact problem you are encountering, I can only assume it is the one crash that we know about, when setting a breakpoint on unused (and therefore, removed) code. This is a problem in generic GDB (i.e. it will affect every recent toolchain based on this release of GDB, and not just ARM). We are working with ARM to fix the issue and get it into the GDB mainline sources. The workarounds are:
a) do not set breakpoints on unused code. As they are unused, they will NEVER be hit anyway
b) remove the "--gc-sections" option from the linker. This will stop unused code from being removed from your executable

'Debug buttons disabled'. We have had one or two reports of this. There have also been some reports by other companies using the latest version of CDT from the Eclipse foundation. At the moment, we are unable to reproduce the problem and so it is in Limbo. If you can give us detailed instructions on how to reliably reproduce the problem, we will immediately investigate and fix the issue.

The ARM toolchains are certainly not in a bad way - the problems you are experiencing can affect anybody using the GDB v7.6 and "-gc-sections" in their application or the latest version of Eclipse/CDT. We try to provide our customers with the latest release of these products so they can exploit the latest features and optimisations.

BTW: Can you explain what you mean by the Installer not working on Debian? Did you read the release notes (and the README provided in the install directory) which explains what packages are required before running the installer. While we do not directly support Debian(*), we do not know of any reason why it should not work.
(*) There are such a huge number of Linux distros it is impossible for us to install and test on every different variant.