I totally agree - Eclipse is a way overcomplicated frustrating beast for=20
microcontroller development.  I use it with CodeSourcery for Stellaris=20
ARM, and frankly I hate/fear it.  The code editor is great, stepping and=20
looking at variables/memory etc. is smooth, but configuration hassles to=20
get even simple projects running is daunting.  With MPLAB, I can get a=20
new project for a PIC setup and starting-point code from an existing=20
project running with the CCS C compiler in 1 minute.  This is simply=20
impossible in Eclipse.  God help you if you have a wrong setting=20
somewhere and you don't know why your debug session won't start or the=20
compiler throws odd errors.

If you are developing 250K -> multi-million line systems with=20
Subversion/CVS and multiple developers and targeting a half dozen=20
platforms with 3 builds each, well, it is geared for that, absolutely.=20
This is not the majority of microcontroller development that I do or am=20
involved in, in any way.

I see this as the biggest impediment to widespread adoption of ARM+GCC=20
for the less experienced pros/high-level hobbyist EEs.  I cannot=20
recommend it to several high-level hobbyist friends who are reasonably=20
comfortable with AVR+GCC.  I was originally very very enthused about it,=20
saying this is the future etc. etc. and it is, but disappointingly this=20
future does not include the more casual EE.

MPLAB and AVR studio will likely never be in the same league as the=20
Eclipse code editor, and Microchip and Atmel will have to spend $100s of=20
K a year on developer time on enhancing tools that Eclipse just has for=20
the taking, but I think they are making the right choice.

I'm curious if other ARM vendors that use Eclipse have managed to=20
simplify or streamline or bury the complexity somehow to make it more=20
microcontroller developer friendly.

Anyway, my 2c.
J


Xiaofan Chen wrote:
>
> Their reason of not using Eclipse is quite interesting.
>
> "All of Atmel's future development environments will be based upon
> the AVR Studio IDE. Atmel will no longer support Eclipse-based IDEs
> or editors. As Eclipse is more geared towards desktop PC software
> development, Eclipse has not proven itself as efficient or effective as
> a dedicated embedded development IDE such as AVR Studio."
>
--=20
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