From: Maarten B. <sou...@ds...> - 2006-11-06 20:18:35
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Hello Mark, You're right, I'm an active developer of SDCC. And I also have little information on how many people / organizations use SDCC. I could point you to the download statistics, but that doesn't say too much. If it's downloaded, tested and rejected it doesn't show as such. If it's downloaded, copied and used many times it also does not show. And my experience on forums, the internet in general or even conventional business is: you never hear from your users unless there is something wrong. All I can tell you is that some other silicon vendors notice they have SDCC users as clients. SDCC's greatest advantage is of course the low threshold to start using it. But we cannot guarantee it is bugfree. We cannot even guarantee a bug will be fixed by us. We can guarantee OTOH that you have access to the sources and can find and fix a bug yourself. If a certain bug is a showstopper to you this can prove to be an advantage. If you consider external components (software) a high risk we cannot alleviate this risk from you. For that you will have to turn to commercial compiler vendors or implement your own. If you want to use SDCC as a base for that, that is allowed as long as you respect the GNU Public License (publish the sources and keep the copyrights). Allthough I think we would prefer to receive patches. Until now I've used SDCC myself for two completed projects. I send my answer to you and the SDCC developer mailing list so maybe others can jump in. You could also send your question to the SDCC user mailing list or post it on our forum to find out what our current users think. Greetings, Maarten Brock > Hello Maarten, > > My name is Mark Saunders and I work for Cypress Semi as a marketing guy > for their microcontroller products. I'm interested in using the SDCC as > part of our package and would appreciate some advice from you (I saw > that you are active on SDCC for 8051 from the web site). > > We have a software development environment, called PSoC Designer, that > includes a cross compiler for our M8C controller. Looking forward, we > are extending this and working with all Cypress products, which means > we'll be supporting the 8051. The goal is to include SDCC with our > freely-downloadable IDE and, if history is anything to go by, that means > that thousands of developers will be using it. > > The problem I have is that, while SDCC is widely referenced on > microcontoller sites, I cannot prove that it is actually widely used. > Personally, I am confident in the tool - our internal tests have been > encouraging - but this is a big project within the company and so > external components are considered high risk. > > Do you have any data on usage that can help us? Any completed projects? > Any users who will agree to chat with me for a (very short) while? I > realise that this may be a difficult question, and that this is not your > role within the community, but I'd really appreciate any help you can > provide. > > Thanks, Mark. > > > > Cypress Semiconductors > > 198 Champion Court, > > San Jose, CA 95134 > > Business: (408) 545-6939 > > E-mail: yf...@cy... > > > > |