Electronic – Using CooCox as an alternative to Keil MDK-ARM – any limitations

cdevelopment-toolskeilmicrocontrollerstm32f4

A very popular and advertised tool for programming ARM microcontrollers is Keil MDK-ARM. The evaluation version can be downloaded here. However there is a code-size limitation of 32 kB for using the evaluation version of Keil. After some searching I found out that the CooCox IDE is a free alternative to Keil and similar software.

So my question, given that CooCox is absolutely free is… Is CooCox an alternative with no such limitations of code-size, etc.?

Best Answer

CooCox (by default, at least) uses the GCC compiler (tautology alert!), which is completely free. I've been using CooCox for postgrad work and, although there are a few issues with the IDE (because it's Eclipse-based - make of that what you will...) I have found it to be very usable when compared to MDK-ARM (which I use at my day job).

CooCox (and GCC) have no code size limitations that I am aware of, and CooCox integrates very nicely with the STLINKv2 (including the built-in STLINKv2 on the ST32F Disco boards) for cheap STM32F debugging.