Inexpensive ARM Development Tools

[rsjsouza]

Okay, time to regroup and rethink this Eclipse performance issue...

Up to now, I've tried various embedded toolchains based on Eclipse, including LPCXpresso (and CodeRed before that) and Atollic TrueStudio. In every case I was disappointed by the sluggish performance downloading code to boards and especially by the sluggishness when single-stepping code in the debugger.

Several implementations that use Eclipse as a debugger usually use GDB as a middleware that talks to the low-level JTAG device drivers. The early instances of the combination Eclipse+GDB used to impose a large performance impact, thus making several integrators/vendors to create their own debugger Eclipse plugins. In these cases bottlenecks can be either from the Eclipse/proprietary debugger integration or from the low-level JTAG drivers.

For the ones that still use GDB, what matters is the performance of the JTAG device drivers themselves. This allows me to run GDB from the command line and find out in most cases the issue is independent on the IDE.

All in all, it is entirely due to the integrator/vendor to properly optimize their stuff.

[Sal Ammoniac]

For the ones that still use GDB, what matters is the performance of the JTAG device drivers themselves. This allows me to run GDB from the command line and find out in most cases the issue is independent on the IDE.

In my experience, Segger JTAG drivers are the fastest, usually by a wide margin.

[Roicker]

You could also go to the TI launchpad, especially the Tiva/Stellaris one, you can either use the Energia environment which is basically the same as the arduino, the  IDE provided by TI or any other tools. I do like the LaunchPad board to be honest, and there are a lot of variants like one with Ethernet

And don't be fooled by the arduino environment, as its in fact C/C++ programming

+1 for using the Tiva C, I have one and I love it!

[Klaas]

Nice story!

I have the opposite. I never get used to that ridicules Crosswork layout.

I also use Embitz and the windows are not floating (once you docked them somewhere in your main window). I use Embitz mainly because of all the debugger features, once you are used to have live variables and memory views you can't easily switch back to some IDE without this feature. It saves me a lot of time.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

it does 16 full loops under 30 seconds (each loop has 4 steps). So that is over two steps per second.
Mind I did not state the are no faster stepping IDEs but OP's 2s sounds impossible (or OP has messed up something badly with setup).

OP here... If something in my setup is messed up, then it's the fault of the IDE vendor because this happens on a default install of the tool with no modifications done to the setup by me.

The stepping speed you quote is nothing to brag about. Two steps per second is still 1/2 second per step, which is crawling. Rowley CrossWorks can easily do >10 steps per second with an ST-Link/V2.

Are you talking about single stepping or running and waiting to hit a breakpoint?
If it's single stepping I'm not sure how you press the step button that fast.
If its running to a breakpoint it should be really fast, I haven't noticed any problematic speed issues with Eclipse while remote debugging. easily >10 steps per second.

[Brutte]

If its running to a breakpoint it should be really fast

I have tried it with single HLL step (one C line, not one asm op-code), just pressed F6 down firmly.

The st-link v2 has a 1800kHz clock (max) so there should not be a significant difference between Keil or OpenOCD + Eclipse. The difference might be that at each step an IDE and debugger has to interrogate target. The only thing that has to be made is to read PC, then move breakpoint to next position and then continue when doing such fast stepping. All the other stuff like reading IO registers or flash/sram is necessary only when an IDE needs to update ALL views (which is not needed when doing fast stepping).

So perhaps here lies the difference.
10 steps per second sounds really great, my setup does only 2 per second (which is still ok for me).

[dannyf]

I also use Embitz

I'm their biggest fan since their beta days - still use EmBlocks beta 1.0 today. It is my go-to IDE for PIC24.

For most of playing around ST's ARM offerings, I use CoIDE (1.x). Love how it sets up the project for you effortlessly.

[ElektroQuark]

I'm leaving Windows and EmBitz is one of the few applications I'm missing very much. No alternatives on Linux. I'm using KDS but it is soo biiigggg.