I want to start developing embedded applications on ARM and I am looking into the tools options and honestly it's quite confusing.
I am trying to decide on which IDE and debugger I will be using and so far I see the most common are:
IDE:
Debuggers:
Looking into all this options I can so far see that Keil and IAR are the industry most preferred IDE (despite looking horribly old...but most people say they compile very optimized code), and they do have some free versions.
The real issue for me is which debugger to choose.
U-link only works with
Keil, and
I-jet only works
IAR, but
J-Link work with
both and appear to be very good (I am not aware if using
J-Link will leave some IDE special functions unavailable, I am just saying it appears to be good because it's faster to upload code).
BUT all of them are really expensive (there is a student version of
J-Link but it can't be used for profitable projects so I am inclined to not choose that one).
Then comes the classic poor man's choice: Olimex (around U$50-U$75). But Olimex appears to only work with IAR (and I like to have the ability to use the debugger on the IDE) and some other Open Source softwares only.
What puzzles me is I don't see many people speaking about
LPC-Link2 from NXP. It's cheaper than all of them and you can upload
J-Link firmware and it will work with IAR and Keil for just U$28,00! Since I don't see many people talking about it, it makes me feel there some "catch", something I am missing on it...but so far it appears to be the best option (although I can't find any tech specs on NXP website, and this raises some flags).
So what I want from this post is basically:
- What is your current tools choice (IDE and Debugger)?
- Why?
- Any tools you used before and didn't like?
- Why?
- Did I miss any details or important information in my "tools" options small review?
- Do you know why people don't speak much about the LPC-Link2? Are there any issues with the debugger? Performance is not good or something else? (this question is optional)
PS: I posted this before on
electronics.stackexchange but since it's more a survey than a question they put it on hold, what is a shame because their system will be great to upvote the most used and recommended tools automatically. Anyways I hope to find many good options in here with so many talented engineers in this forum