thank you Jim for the verification.
i'm using the latest IDE from nxp website which is R2.2 and the SDK version is RTM 3. i would expect the toolchain to be backward compatible.
on the other hand, if you look into the two files that i mentioned, they both DO contain exactly the same variable definition, which is a violation of the C project thus it should have failed.
s32K_1xx_BCC_Eval/sources/uja_sbc/uja_1169.c line 15: lpspi_state_t g_lpspiState[LPSPI_INSTANCE_COUNT];
s32K_1xx_BCC_Eval/sources/mc33771c/mc33771c_peripheries.c line 53: lpspi_state_t g_lpspiState[LPSPI_INSTANCE_COUNT];
there would be a linker error when linking the final elf.
thanks
gz