Re:Some examples for the GNU toolchain
Maybe your company can extend OpenOCD by Cortex-M3-support and provide patches to the OpenOCD-developer(s). This will mean that you have to open your source-code but should also increase the number of your customers (users who run Linux, BSD, Mac-OS etc.).
It's possible to use a closed-source binary proxy as an intermediary between the USB Stack and an open source JTAG driver and/or debugger. This is being done with the msp430 USB BDM devices, which similarly use a proprietary protocol. The closed-source msp430-gdbproxy enables the use of the TI USB JTAG tool on both Windows and linux with the gdb debugger, and this is 100% free and redistributable.
Also, although the CodeSourcery gdb drivers only work on Windows, the same rules that permit the use of these closed source drivers on Windows would also allow them to be used on linux, assuming they wanted to do that. The biggest problem with the CodeSourcery solution is that it's not free, and even their personal-use license seems a bit expensive to me.
My experience is mostly on the Windows side, and I'd like to help make an appropriate closed-source driver for Windows that can inter-operate with open source debuggers, but be freely re-distributable (unlike the CodeSourcery drivers). Once done, I could work with linux experts to make it work on that platform.
I may also port my own visual debugger to support arm targets to give users a simpler debugging solution than gdb/Insight/Eclipse out-of-the-box. This would be not be up to the level of most commercial toolsets, but would be simple to use and free (and open source aside from that one one driver). My previous open source work has been for the Freescale hc12 devices.
Eric
http://www.ericengler.com/EmbeddedGNU.aspx
http://www.ericengler.com/Pluto.aspx
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