Crosswork ARM for hobby is it worth? if I upgrade from Eclipse

[nquantum]

I use Eclipse ARM by by Liviu Ionescu , GNU toolchain. I'm happy with it since this is hobby project. With STM32cubeMX, some search and reading I can get job done in projects and learning more.

Of course I'm not like to just stick to one tool. Look for some upgrade or have more tools. And I'm not willing to pay 4k+ in something like Keil or Iar even they have free with limit code size, some display-projects already over those limit. I think for now GNU toolchain is fine for me.

Many recommend Crossworks ARM for their hobby license 150$ and quite feature rich/productive than Eclipse. I just like to know feedback is it worth? I've download and try for sometime already. I seem to flow and quite good however...

The reason I ask because this license no service right? Meaning if I have problem/question I only can ask from their community , their community seem to be deserted, many of topics no reply even way back more that 1 year! Many answers seem to come after a month or more. So this is something I like to hear from u guys. What is your thinking about Crossworks ARM form Rowley? Do I have better choice? 

It seem it me price/function of crossworks seem good. Compare to Keil/Iar  Crossworks hobby price is nothing. I think I might buy license but concern if there is better option for me? Or don't care service use it anyway?
No service is concern me since during evaluation/test my STM32 Discovery cannot connect many times (I've convert St-link to Jlink) it say can not stop processor. (So I need erase or reset by press reset button in right time before click connect) But no problem in Eclipse. I check their community and I think if I depend on this tools, I must be on my own problem for sure. (I feel Eclipse ARM I get more help, more quick..)

Please give me some feedback thank!

[rstofer]

I started with CrossWorks several years ago when the ARM 7TDMI was popular (LPC 2106, LPC2148).  I found the IDE to be elegant, the toolchain all worked properly but the important thing was the CrossConnect JTAG dongle.  It worked really well.

I find printf() to be a better debugging method that hardware solutions - for me.

I think you will like CrossWorks.

[AndyC_772]

I use CrossWorks professionally on a regular basis.

I have some gripes about it for sure, but for the most part, it "just works" in a way that DIY installations based on free software don't unless you have a great deal of time and energy to spend.

My time spent using it is productive, and it's definitely a tool which I regard as actively helping me get my job done, rather than getting in the way.

[Sal Ammoniac]

I use CrossWorks for ARM under the personal ($150) license. I find it much faster than any Eclipse implementation, particularly Atollic, which I find to be really slow. It "just works"... I don't have to fiddle with obscure settings and barely compatible (and often out of date) plug-ins.

We use IAR at work, but I prefer CrossWorks, and, since I have a choice, that's what I use for hobby work.

[rcbuck]

AndyC_772 and Sal Ammoniac,

I considered purchasing the personal license last year. I wanted to become familiar with ARM and felt CrossWorks would be suitable for my use. I was interested in implementing a web server so I could control a few things around the house. I contacted Rowley and asked about their Network Bolt-on package. I received this reply:

"We're not actively developing the Network product any more - the world has gone LWIP/FreeRTOS/mbed"

Have either of you done any work with TCP/IP and CrossWorks? If so, how did you accomplish it? I like the idea of an IDE that "just works".

Like nquantum asked, would it be worth the $150 price if I were going to use it for a TCP/IP application?

[nquantum]

Appreciated the answer that Crossworks quite productivity than Eclipse.
Also like evb149 say I've learn that there is more IDE tools from vendor to choose Atollic , MCUExpresso , Segger etc. That is good.

Some like rstofer, Ammoniac or AndyC_772 use Crossworks at home for personal projects too. I'm sure you must have something to ask for help, some problem right?
But this personal license come with no service so how can you solve problem? You do it for you own? Search from Rowley forum? I check them forum it seem to take light year responding. Many question is more than 1 year without answer.

So this make me think more to spend money to something I need fix by myself. Even it productivity is good than other. Still Eclipse ARM is quickly respond in forum. Okay no support also.
Well I have problem connecting board to Crossworks since evaluation then I still find fixing. So that make me question about servicing of personal license before consider buy.

[donotdespisethesnake]

I'm sure you must have something to ask for help, some problem right?
But this personal license come with no service so how can you solve problem? You do it for you own? Search from Rowley forum? I check them forum it seem to take light year responding. Many question is more than 1 year without answer.

Crossworks personal license works great for experienced users who do not need support from Rowley. Unless you have found a genuine bug, don't expect any.

[AndyC_772]

I've not used it for TCP/IP. Most of my products use CAN bus and/or a UART for digital communication.

[nquantum]

Crossworks personal license works great for experienced users who do not need support from Rowley. Unless you have found a genuine bug, don't expect any.

Well that bad. Don't know why pay money for. My dark pirates side think. But that is the way... I think. Then how to distinguish bug vs personal problem then? Then anyway during evaluation I will try to contact them problem I'vs found.

[newbrain]

If you are using Windows (I suppose you do, Crossworks is Windows only IIRC), and you happen to Like Visual Studio, you could consider the embeddedVisualGDB.

I personally find VS largely better than Eclipse, and the integration of VisualGDB with gcc, gdb and OpenOCD is next to perfect for my purposes.
Apart from ARMs from all the major vendors, there's support also for ESP8266 and MSP430.
Visual Studio Community is free as in beer, and does not really lack anything  major for an hobbyist from the higher version.

When I tried Crossworks I was not overwhelmed, but that was some years ago, so YMMV.
I distinctly remember I was not able to change keyboard shortcut, as that is one pet peeve of mine.

[takahidehimself]

If you are using Windows (I suppose you do, Crossworks is Windows only IIRC),...

It's available for macOS and Linux as well.

[Dubbie]

I am certainly no expert, but I really like visualGDB as well. They are super helpful on the forums too. Happy to answer my dumb questions within 12 hours or so. It’s one of those “works out of box” type deals. I really like the debug tools as well. The graphs of variable values are particularly useful to me.

[newbrain]

If you are using Windows (I suppose you do, Crossworks is Windows only IIRC),...

It's available for macOS and Linux as well.

I stand corrected, thanks for the info.
For some strange reason, I was not able to get to Rowley's site from my work computer when I wrote the comment.

[rheb1026]

I'll throw in another vote for VisualGDB. I started using it at home for personal projects (it's like $89 for the basics and worked great right out of the gate) and liked it so much that we purchased licenses at work, too, after the other engineers tried it. It always drove me crazy that Eclipse wouldn't do code completion for C. VisualGDB does code completion even with register names and it's very good about offering suggestions in the context that you're in.

For example, if I type:

GPIO_Struct.Pin = GPIO_Pin_5

the next time I type "GPIO_Struct" it won't suggest ".Pin" any longer. If I type: "GPIO_Struct.Mode" it will only suggest the correct mode bit masks

Support has always been good, too. They're in Germany, I believe, so usually I'd receive an email reply sometime in the middle of the night.

The variable graphing ability is nice too, plus you can save it to a CSV file.

[nctnico]

Ofcourse Eclipse has C code completion! Perhaps you turned it off by accident.

IMHO it depends greatly on what you are doing. Debugger integration may be better in Crosswork but it also depends on what dongle you are using. Then again debugging code running in a microcontroller is not the best idea to begin with. Also in my experience Eclipse works better on Linux than on Windows. IMHO one of the big advantages of Eclipse is that it supports multiple languages and targets from one workspace in one environment.

[rheb1026]

Ofcourse Eclipse has C code completion! Perhaps you turned it off by accident.

You're right, it does, and I wasn't very clear in my meaning. It would do code completion in C, but only if you typed a period or pressed control+space. So yes, if you wanted to press control+space every time you wanted it to show potential register names, etc. I searched high and low for a setting to just automatically turn it on, but couldn't find it!

VisualGDB just automatically pops up with suggestions once you start typing register or variable names.

Edit: I was using the OpenSTM32 version of Eclipse, if it makes any difference

[Sal Ammoniac]

Have either of you done any work with TCP/IP and CrossWorks? If so, how did you accomplish it? I like the idea of an IDE that "just works".

I use CAN for I/O on most of my projects. When I've needed TCP/IP I've used a WIZnet W5500.

[Sal Ammoniac]

I bought a license for VisualGDB and used it for about a week. I found it clunky and slow, so I went back to CrossWorks.

[julianhigginson]

I really like the idea of visualGDB but my now probably out of date experience was a bit disappointing...

about a year and a half ago I used it for a project that had both a cortex-m part, and an embedded Linux part.. we had the $300ish visual gdb license.

it worked for both parts of the project, which was impressive, but seemed a bit weird, and not quite complete. Menus didn't make sense for the cortex m project, and multiple people across the project using all kinds of different computers had crashing issues with the clang intellisense plugin which would crash the whole visual studio ide regularly...

I *would* be interested to try again as the developers seemed pretty keen, and if they have been continuing to develop since then, I'd expect they will have progressed a lot.

Biggest gotcha for getting too attached to visualGDB as a commercial tool is the Visual Studio community license... Once your team gets too big, you can't use community any more, and then you're in paid VS land, which is pretty expensive, and you could just as well afford any of the other commercial embedded IDEs..

[marcopolo]

I think the free Segger IDE is an old version of Crossworks

[Sal Ammoniac]

I think the free Segger IDE is an old version of Crossworks

It's reasonably up-to-date with CrossWorks, but has had support for all debug probes except the Segger J-Link removed.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Another option that's free for non-commercial use is Segger's Ozone product. The caveat here is that Ozone is only a debugger--it has no code editor or way to invoke a compiler/linker. You need to build your code using another IDE or command line tools, but it's a nice debugger with some features I haven't seen in other products. One I particularly like is the ability to click on a + sign associated with a line of C code to see the assembly language corresponding to that line.


https://www.segger.com/products/development-tools/ozone-j-link-debugger/