Re:CodeSourcery, DriverLib and first steps

I hope you didn't misunderstood me. There absolutely no "battle" against the commercial IDE, and I agree with you that professional tools is the best choice from a bussines point of view.

I think the sentance
The open source solution can really be an alternative to commercial IDE if we can come out with a clear and detailled documentation.
is the cause of the misunderstanding. I wrote it in a moment of "euphoria"...


You already clearly listes the weak points of open source tools, just for par codicio I would like to list some good points of free tools (purely personal):

1)For their nature free tools needs more reflection in order to work, for that reason Engineers that use them are normaly able to go deeper in the problems. The pain is payed pack by a intellectual improvement.

2)Some of the free tools I listed should be ranked as professional. I'm talking about eclipse and GCC. Eclipse is just amazing and still improving very fast. GCC is the base of many professional tools.

3)A lot of source code is outside ready to be used, most of this code is compiled using free tools. Offen I saw people unable to use it and reinventing the wheel because unable to understand "how it works". The free solution is nearer to all those projects and the "intellectual improvement" mentioned on the first point will help you reducing time and energy.

4)There's a lot to do with 32kb of codes, but what about the day you reach the limit? You will be forced to make a compromise on your project or to pay the bill. If none of them is possible the third option (I completely disagre with that one) is to use illegal copies, this sound to me very stupid when outside there is a free and legal option.

5)Sometimes engineers get frustrated by bad managers that don't have your correct approach and will not agree to spend the 3k$ for a professional tool.



Regards