Best Path for Using Linux with MSP

[salty9 0]

I'm moving to Linux and would like to find a good process to use MSP430.

[bluehash 1,578]

A Step by Step Guide To MSP430 Programming under Linux

[Rickta59 589]

A Step by Step Guide To MSP430 Programming under Linux

 

Not sure I'd follow that path. mspdebug can act as a gdb server and is easier and better supported than the suggested msp430-gdbproxy. The suggestion to use mspgcc4 is dead end. No one is supporting it and it doesn't work with the newer value line 'G' series of chips. xpg's recent eclipse plugin is a much better option than all the downloads and configuration flogging suggested in that article.

 

The best path to take depends on your background and which devices you plan to use. Maybe you could tell us a little more about that.

 

-rick

[gordon 229]

A Step by Step Guide To MSP430 Programming under Linux

Not sure I'd follow that path.

Yup. That blog post should have have a big red EXPIRED watermark all over the place.

 

These days one is better off just installing the msp430 toolchain from her distro's packages, optionally with xpg's Eclipse stuff for an IDE; the days of hand-compiling should be gone by now, and is better left to the likes of Rick and me .

 

Or just use CCS 5.2 (not released yet, though, but seems to be "pretty close"; beta is available).

[Fe2o3Fish 33]

Sergio Campama has done a fine job with the Uniarch GCC (gcc 4.5.3).

Instructions to install are here but they are not 'trivial' but they do work,

at least for me they did.

 

-Rusty-

[nexusone1984 32]

Which linux distro are you moving to?

 

I personally use Mint, but the packages come from the Ubuntu repository. There are easy to download pre-package compiler and support files.

 

Link for package files for ubuntu/Mint download and install all the packages:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/+s ... ext=msp430

 

other distros here at this link:

 

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/m ... SPGCC_Wiki

[salty9 0]

I have been thrashing around for 2 or 3 days trying to find a download source that I could use and finally discovered that you can download and install the packages with the Mint system software installer. Given this, I estimate that it shouldn,t take more than 2 or 3 months to learn how to use it. :oops:

[worstell 2]

I have had excellent results using naken430asm and mspdebug. The MSP430 assembly language is so easy that I prefer it to c.

The author was great at quickly fixing some bugs I found. I don't know of any bugs in the latest version.

Getting include files is now very easy - I wrote a Lua script to extract them from the Code Composer Studio program. It is part of the download of naken430asm, I think.

 

Naken430asm does not yet work with the extended instruction set.

g.

[cde 334]

I have had excellent results using naken430asm and mspdebug. The MSP430 assembly language is so easy that I prefer it to c.

The author was great at quickly fixing some bugs I found. I don't know of any bugs in the latest version.

Getting include files is now very easy - I wrote a Lua script to extract them from the Code Composer Studio program. It is part of the download of naken430asm, I think.

 

Naken430asm does not yet work with the extended instruction set.

g.

 

Ive seen some of his work on Hackaday, and it's great (asm compiler from scratch, taking an ir rc car remote and hacking it into a msp/linux driver, and the bluetooth), but ASM kills me. Give me C code for the love of not having migraines...

[rockets4kids 204]

[ ... ] ASM kills me. Give me C code for the love of not having migraines...

 

In general, I'm with you on that one.

 

However, I have done a few small projects in pure asm (using Naken430) and I must say I enjoy working so close to the hardware. There is an elegance that you just don't get with C. Then again, I'm the kind of person that get's bothered by the fact that gcc can't optimize hardware register access to BIS/BIC instructions. Still, I really don't think I would ever use pure asm for anything requiring more than a few screenfuls of code.

 

I am of the opinion that every programmer should understand asm and know how to use it, and Naken430 is *perfect* for this because it doesn't buden the user with all of the complexity required by a "professional" assembler.

 

On the other side of things, I am amazed at how the DCPU-16 project is taking off. I am very curious to see if that leads to a revival of ASM programming among younger programmers who have not discovered embedded yet.

[pabigot 355]

Then again, I'm the kind of person that get's bothered by the fact that gcc can't optimize hardware register access to BIS/BIC instructions.

It's supposed to. If you can provide an example where it's not doing what you expect, it might get fixed. Check it against LTS-20120406 first, though.

[salty9 0]

I was starting to feel like Moses wandering in the wilderness but I finally found http://www.naken.cc/micro/naken430asm_msp430_assembler.php which allowed me to program a mcu. The first positive step.

[spirilis 1,264]

Heh on the topic of ASM and gcc, I was going to ask, does gcc make use of those Constant Generator registers when it cranks out ASM code?

[pabigot 355]

Heh on the topic of ASM and gcc, I was going to ask, does gcc make use of those Constant Generator registers when it cranks out ASM code?

There is one optimization that switches between add and sub when using constants like -2, -4, or -8. Otherwise there's nothing to do when generating assembly code, but the assembler does generates the appropriate reference to CG1 or CG2 instead of wasting a word on an immediate. Even when the constant is a 32-bit or 64-bit value where an interior word conforms to a CG value.

[tonesenna 20]

kubuntu has the msp toolchain packages and related utilities in the repositories. The package versions are fairly recent.

 

When my launchpad arrived I followed this guide: http://mitchtech.net/cross-compiling-fo ... launchpad/

 

It worked quite well for me except the gdb part, which didn't work for me, even following the steps provided.

My solution was to completely remove the native GDB (I wasn't using it anyway) and then I managed to install msp-gdb.

 

In a couple of minutes I got the launchpad up and running.

 

As for next steps, I'd recommend an IDE of your choice. I like kdevelop a lot for C and C++ stuff, it's a matter of taste.

 

cheers,

--to