Classic embedded development tools

[e.stiebler]

Tim Shoppa wrote:
> But in my experience, outside the hobbyist community the
> freeware embedded tools don't have much traction.  I'd be glad to
> be proven wrong! Actually I do know of a couple of
> small commercial projects that used gcc for StrongARM and
> have heard of a couple that use gcc for MSP430.

Just spend some time and look, how many of the "commercial" vendors
are actually selling just front-end (GUI !) to tools from the GNU Chain.
This is at least true for a lot of the 32-bit developement packages.
And, even the big players are selling you those for big bucks.

> I myself use gputils (GNU PIC utilities) and gpsim occasionally
> and am occasionally forced to plunge into hell with commercial
> embedded development tools (which mostly suck) under
> Windows.

Yes, and then you notice again, how easy it actually was, to make your 
compiles with make, it was portable, and easy to understand what is 
happening behind the scripts.
PFUI !
;-)