ARM launches free toolkit for Android | Hacker News Reader

ARM launches free toolkit for Android

arm.com

59 pointskgutteridge11 comments

Does this Community Edition toolkit include armcc, ARM's excellent (but expensive) optimizing compiler?

I don't understand why ARM charges thousands of dollars per seat for their compiler. gcc generates crappy ARM code. Doesn't ARM want all developers to be able to build fast ARM applications? Why doesn't ARM just contribute their compiler expertise to improving gcc rather than developing a complete toolchain?

Doesn't ARM want all developers to be able to build fast ARM applications?

No. Arm wants to make money, ideally off of the ARM architecture and related stuff. If they can make more money by selling their compiler, they'll do it.

But how much money does ARM really make selling (perhaps only a few hundred?) compiler licenses? Compare that revenue to strengthening the ARM platform's position compared to competing embedded architectures?

Not available for OS/X.

Wants to force you to wrestle with the 600 pound monster of Eclipse.

Not free if you company has ten people or more.

What is OS/X? Is it based on OS/2?

> Not available for OS/X.

That's a reasonable complaint.

> Wants to force you to wrestle with the 600 pound monster of Eclipse.

The Android SDK is based on Eclipse. If you want to complain about that, talk to Google. Complaining to ARM is just silly.

> Not free if you company has ten people or more.

Yes, it is a freemium model. What's wrong with that?

There's an Eclipse plugin in the Android SDK, but the Android SDK isn't based on Eclipse.

I use it with the far more pleasurable command line tools and ultra-productive text editor Vim.

This is not an alternative to the android ndk, right? I haven't had to use the ndk-gdb debugger so far (I just debug the native linux version) so I'm not sure if this project will help me or not.

Maybe the system profiler is worthwhile? Anyone know?

this is for writing arm assembly afaict, ndk is c/c++ (though u can probably do assembly) but this is kind of like an msvc vs gcc thing

I think this is one of the only times that I've seen assembly advertised as being able to be reused on multiple platforms.

"DS-5 CE completes the serious app developer toolkit with a comprehensive C, C++ and Assembly"

I think it's fair to say they expect most people to be writing C/C++, not Assembly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com