GCC and FreeRTOS

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Chuck Hackett

• December 14, 2010 19:05

As one evaluating CrossWorks I wonder:

1) Is there any relationship between the CrossWorks compiler and GCC?  I came across something that implied that there was.

2) Is it possible to edit and recompile (by invoking an existing makefile, etc.) an existing WinAVR project from within the CrossWorks IDE?  (I know CrossWorks can debug an external project) 

3) Is there a "WinAVR/GCC to CrossWorks Conversion guide"?

4) I had started using FreeRTOS before I discovered CrossWorks.  I understand that there is a CrossWorks port for FreeRTOS but I wonder how it compares to the built-in multitasking?  One thing is that there is a Java helper for the debugger for the builtin task support.  Is there such a debugger helper for FreeRTOS?

Regards,

Chuck Hackett

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  Paul Curtis

  • December 14, 2010 22:07

  1. Only in the case of ARM, not for AVR.  For AVR we use our own compiler.

  2. Not really; you will need to port the project to CrossWorks.  This will, most likely, require source changes, but not very many, to deal with interrupts and the like.  I ported the SparkFun Button Pad firmware to CrossWorks in about 90 seconds.  Very simple.

  3. Nope.  WinAVR is not our target market.

  4. The JavaScript extends the deugger to populate the Threads window.  I believe there is something written for FreeRTOS, but you may have a time finding it.  I'm not sure Richard keeps it up to date or even maintains it, it may well be for ARM and user-contributed to FreeRTOS.

  You have to love CTL.  I do.  Can't get enough of it for the moment!

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  Bill Landolina

  • April 21, 2014 23:18

  Any improvement on this front?  I have a customer using IAR and FreeRTOS (FreeRTOS today, headed towards SafeRTOS) and I'd like to get them to move to Crossworks.  They hate IAR's licensing dongles, but changing out the tasker for a proprietary one bothers them.

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  Paul Curtis

  • April 22, 2014 08:21

  Which target processor?  We have a plan for FreeRTOS and it's not that difficult to integrate FreeRTOS anyway.

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  Bill Landolina

  • April 22, 2014 10:00

  Paul - The immediate need is for NXP ARM Cortex CPUs.- The legacy products are on Cortex M3 (LPC17xx) and we are discussing a move to M4 CPUs (LPC43xx which is M4/M0).  

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  Paul Curtis

  • April 22, 2014 10:18

  Bill,

  There are examples on the FreeRTOS website already that work with CrossWorks.  Porting FreeRTOS is not that difficult, it's just a bunch of source code and #defines, and the only tricky bit is getting the tick to tick.  You don't need to move to CTL.  If you require assistance getting FreeRTOS on an LPC1700 then tell us which board you'd like it on and we can simply produce you an example that does it.

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  Bill Landolina

  • April 22, 2014 10:44

  Understood - I've gotten FreeRTOS running on several ARM variants without much difficulty - the only area that concerns me is making sure the debugger' understands the threading.  I saw that there are versions of thread.js for FreeRTOS but it isn't clear if they are current.  I'll move forward with getting the customer on board with Crossworks and if we come up with a specific issue I'll be back in touch.

  ..and I like CTL just fine too - it's just not where my customer is at the moment.

  Thanks.

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  Paul Curtis

  • April 22, 2014 10:53

  The thread-awareness looks pretty good to me when Jon demonstrated what was happening in a FreeRTOS project.  It's on our list of things to do, and the fact it's not welded into the GUI is a plus...

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  Robert Wood

  • May 01, 2014 13:41

  FWIW I've ported a couple of gcc based projects for Cortex devices to Crossworks and it's  easy. I did it by creating a new project and added all the files, updated paths for headers etc until it worked. I find debugging FreeRTOS in Crossworks easy even without thread windows.

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  Bill Landolina

  • May 01, 2014 14:11

  I've had the same experience porting FreeRTOS on several CPUs, a little path and header wrangling and things just work - at the moment I'm trying to move a customer from IAR to Rowley and thread windows are a feature they specifically asked about.  IAR provides factory support for FreeRTOS integration.  Paul Curtis has indicated that Rowley will help us make it work - I'll be working on that next week and when it works (as I expect it to) I'll post about it.

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