Setting up CoIDE with GNU tools
For some time, I’ve been using Codebench ARM GCC tools for developing software for ARM microcontrollers. As IDE, I used plain Eclipse, which I had to configure by myself. It worked pretty well, and there is nothing wrong with this. Anyway, sometimes it gets a little annoying to keep an eye on configurations and manual settings. So I decided to give a try CooCox IDE which claims to be free and open. It seems that it already supports all the microcontrollers I like to use. Along with this change, I am also moving to a different GCC tool collection. Codebench free tools are great, but on the other hand, there are some limitations. One of them is release times. They release their free tools twice a year, so updates and other improvements cannot reach as fast as you’d expect.Another thing I am concerned – disabled hard float functionality. If you would like to ta take advantage of the floating-point unit in Cortex-M4, then you get stuck. If you are not using a hardware floating-point module, this tool works fine, and you can stick with it. Anyway, I wouldn’t say I like limitations, especially with free tools, so I switch to…