MSP-EXP432P devenlopment on Linux

[ea_man]

Today I got a MSP-EXP432P LauncPad out of the box.
I got this board as I saw that there were a couple of IDEs available for Linux and a lot of documentation / examples.

The Processing-like IDE works, and I can even upload a *arduino sketch using the Cloud IDE, but I can't upload any "normal" C example like "Out of Box Experience GUI", that idiot cloud IDE dosn't even permit to copy the error prompt.

The supposed default IDE:  CCSv6 that should enable debug and "energy trace" turns out to be a32bit binary almost 4 years old, I won't dare to force the install of the dependency http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linux_Host_Support_CCSv6#Debian_64-bit on my system...

Is there a way I can use this board without the Arduino / Wiring core in a sane environment like Eclipse with debug and maybe energy trace, making use of the documentation / examples provided?

Should I insist with that 32bit CCSv6? Even those MSP430Flasher-1_03_07_00-linux-installer.run or utilities for the Cloud IDE turn out to be some damm 32bit stuff that requires multiarch dependencies  and after that they don't even work...

[Monkeh]

The supposed default IDE:  CCSv6 that should enable debug and "energy trace" turns out to be a32bit binary almost 4 years old

Uh, more like a couple months old, and based on fairly recent code. And yes, it's 32-bit, it won't kill you.

I won't dare to force the install of the dependency http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linux_Host_Support_CCSv6#Debian_64-bit on my system...

Why, because it'll make you feel unclean?

[rsjsouza]

I agree with Monkeh: blasting a functional IDE for being 32-bit is really shortsighted. Especially because it is really more featured than the regular open source alternatives...

[krish2487]

You can always go the RedHat-MSP430-GCC tool suite + makefiles way if you don't like the CCS solution.
You also have mspdebug to upload and debug the launchpads.


Though, I wouldn't really fault CCS. It is IMHO one of the relatively functional and decent IDEs out there.
(Dont even get me started on MPLABX and AVRStudio).

[krish2487]

My bad, my tired eyes registered msp430 
Either way, the arm toolchain is not that hard to setup.

[krish2487]

Agreed. CMSIS makes it somewhat easier for portability but the vendor supplied libraries and linker scripts are pathetic.


It is almost as if they are designed so to lockdown the user to a particular vendor.


And IIRC TI has not published any such HAL/Peripheral libs or linker scripts.

[krish2487]

Well, CCS and Rowley both work flawlessly on nix and OS X  and platform agnostic.
You also have commercial versions of both. And rowley is cross vendor capable for the same Cortex series (provided you download the supporting libraries)


It is not an issue of free vs paid. The issue seems to be the general willingness of vendors to provide standardised libraries on their website. Going beyond CMSIS standards.

[andersm]

If your distro is less than four years old, it'll have both an ARM bare-metal cross-compiler and OpenOCD in the package repository. If not, get the compiler here, and build OpenOCD from sources. Then install the GNU ARM Eclipse plugin.

Never tie yourself to anything vendor-specific, unless you absolutely have to.

[rsjsouza]

And IIRC TI has not published any such HAL/Peripheral libs or linker scripts.

CCS ships with linker scripts for most (if not all) Cortex-M and Cortex-A cores, and some devices have peripheral libraries and drivers (they call it driverlib). I am not sure about CMSIS, though.

[Molenaar]

Code Composer Studio is quite decent IMHO, and I mainly use it on Debian. The disadvantage is some older chips, e.g. the MSP430G2553, are not supported on linux, but aside from that, it really works very well.

[krish2487]

@rsjsouza
Thanks!! I was not aware of them. :-)
I ll experiment and see if I can use them to move entirely to arm-gcc toolchain!

[Monkeh]

Code Composer Studio is quite decent IMHO, and I mainly use it on Debian. The disadvantage is some older chips, e.g. the MSP430G2553, are not supported on linux, but aside from that, it really works very well.

Err, yes, they are.

[Molenaar]

Code Composer Studio is quite decent IMHO, and I mainly use it on Debian. The disadvantage is some older chips, e.g. the MSP430G2553, are not supported on linux, but aside from that, it really works very well.

Err, yes, they are.

You're right, the launchpad supporting the MSP430G2553 is not supported, but the chip in general is. My bad.

[Monkeh]

Code Composer Studio is quite decent IMHO, and I mainly use it on Debian. The disadvantage is some older chips, e.g. the MSP430G2553, are not supported on linux, but aside from that, it really works very well.

Err, yes, they are.

You're right, the launchpad supporting the MSP430G2553 is not supported, but the chip in general is. My bad.

And frankly that's a blessing, those TUSB3410's are a nightmare anyway. Plus who wants mini-USB these days.

[Monkeh]

Plus who wants mini-USB these days.

I hate them, but mfgs seem to like them. ST Nucleo uses them, ADI EZ-LITE uses them, ADI latest JTAG cable uses them, TerASIC DE0 Nano/Nano SoC use (a couple of) them, and the list goes on.
All of them are designed in micro USB era.

Cheap to source in obscene quantities.

"Oh, we still have a couple hundred thousand of these left doing nothing? .. okay, we'll use them and order another batch to finish the run for this product"

Never ends.

[ea_man]

Thanks guys, I see that you are quite fond of that CCS suite.

What scares me about it is that the wiki: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linux_Host_Support_CCSv6#Debian_64-bit declares some dependencies that are satisfied by Packages in Wheezy!

Alternatively, you can manually download the latest libudev0:i386 package from wheezy and install it using (e.g.): dpkg -i libudev0_175-7.2_i386.deb
If you cannot install libgcrypt11:i386 then add deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security wheezy/updates main to your /etc/apt/sources.list and try again. This appears to work.

Well I'm not so happy to throw in my Debian Sid with a 4.3 kernel some udev staff from Wheezy :/

This made me think that the whole thing was an "old boat", but if you say that it's worth the effort I'll scarify an ubuntu for it.

If your distro is less than four years old, it'll have both an ARM bare-metal cross-compiler and OpenOCD in the package repository. If not, get the compiler here, and build OpenOCD from sources. Then install the GNU ARM Eclipse plugin.

Never tie yourself to anything vendor-specific, unless you absolutely have to.

This I like more.
I also have some STM32 staff to use (nucleo, maple mini, bluepill) so I guess that I colud use Eclipse to rule them all.

But I bought that Launchpad in order to take advance of the examples and docs, if I go the GCC-ARM way will I be able to use those?

Again thanks for you feedback.

BTW: I've seen somewhere that TI plans to release a 6.2v of CCS 64bit for Linux, yet I have to say that my first contact with the Launchpad board was far from being polished and enjoyable.