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Vitaliy wrote:
> Back in July, there was a discussion titled "[PIC] Is C18 really this 
> stupid?", where it has been conclusively proven that C18 sucks (which 
> generally matches our experience). :) It produces rather inefficient 
> assembler code, and the fact that the libraries are no longer supported is 
> disheartening.
> 
> So I'm wondering if people can share their experiences using third party 
> compilers for the PIC18: SDCC, CCS, HI-TECH, CC8E, BoostC, mikroC, IAR (any 
> others I've missed?)

I've used mikroC and it is the single worst compiler I have ever seen. I
don't know whether or not it doesn't like the 18f4620 - the chip I
started to build a project with (before switching to C18).

There are bugs _everywhere_. Occasionally you must add 256 (for an
unsigned char) if you want to successfully pass it to a function without
complete and random corruption. I once tried to use function pointers
with mikroC - that always ended with broken code.

> Specifically,
> 
> - How stable is it (bugs)?
Apparently there are a few bugs in C18 - the only one I encountered was
fixed about a month after I reported it. To be fair, I was doing
something probably pretty crazy on such a small uC - doing about 40
pointers to structs in a kindof tree fashion.

Don't get me started on mikroC!

> - How well does it integrate with MPLAB?
microC doesn't at all - C18 does.
> - How good are the libraries?

mikroC's libraries are supposedly fantastic, shame that I got too many
bugs in the lower level code to even consider adding the higher level
libraries.

C18's are far more standard and they do the job.

> - How does its performance compare to the C18, and other compilers?

mikroC takes ~1minute for a 9KB program - a little slower than C18 I guess.
> 
> RUMORS
> 
> - SDCC is buggy
> - HI-TECH blows SDCC out of the water in terms of performance

I just wish I could afford HI-TECH!


One thing I'm noticing with C18 is that it throws nops in everywhere! I'm
not sure if it's because I use the free version without optimizations;
however, it shouldn't be de-optimising, should it?

Also note that with C18 it's best to enable 'large stack pointers' - it
makes code so much easier to write. That choice should really be done by
the compiler on a per-function basis, but I can't complain - it's free
after all.

Then again, for my next project I'm pretty certain that I'll try out the
AVRs *takes cover* - simply because I can use JTAG and GCC.

Okay that post was a bit of a spiel but I feel I had to voice my opinion
of mikroC.

- --
Brendan Gillatt
brendan {at} brendangillatt {dot} co {dot} uk
http://www.brendangillatt.co.uk
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xBACD7433
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