[SOLVED] Is it possible to use ARMCC toolchain with Segger Embedded Studio and easily migrate to SES from Keil?

Sergey22 · Nov 27th 2019, 9:28am

Hello, currently we have a big project maintained under Keil IDE and have licence for Keil compiler.
We would like to migrate to more comfortable IDEs such as SES. However, we need to preserve ARMCC compiler since it provides most size optimized code comparing to other ARM compilers.

I have tried to setup SES, following this guide and many others posts to solve errors that appear on the way, however it did not work out to many errors appeared. Moreover it looks like there is no in built possibility to setup ARMCC compiler in SES.

Thus, my question is - is it even possible to use ARMCC compiler with SES? If yes, how can I easily setup SES for it?

Thank you in advance!

awneil · Nov 27th 2019, 10:17am

Sergey22 wrote:

I have tried to setup SES, following this guide

That's about using the Internal toolchain - ie, GCC:

[img]https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/ug_gsg_ses/UG/gsg/images/toolchain.png[/img]

I guess you would need to use an External toolchain? - did you try that?

how can I easily (sic) setup SES for it?

Again, I don't think there's any reason to believe that this will ever be "easy" with any toolchain or any IDE

community.arm.com/developer/to…-other-ides/161584#161584

awneil · Nov 27th 2019, 10:22am

Hmmm ... why didn't that picture work?

It appeared OK in the preview!

:wacko:

SEGGER - Nino · Nov 27th 2019, 11:10am

Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry.
Yes an external toolchain can be used with Embedded Studio. The following guide shows a how to when using IARCC and importing it to use internal toolchain + troubleshooting steps:
wiki.segger.com/Port_Projects_…kbench_to_Embedded_Studio

The steps for ARMCC are similar. However we recommend to do the port to gcc/clang manually because that way you save the time getting the external toolchain running on Embedded Studio and can directly start the porting process of the incomaptible files etc.

Best regards,
Nino

awneil · Nov 27th 2019, 11:24am

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

we recommend to do the port to gcc/clang manually

That's a very good suggestion, if changing compilers; but the OP wants to keep the same compiler - just change the IDE.

Sergey22 · Nov 27th 2019, 3:19pm

awneil wrote:

I guess you would need to use an External toolchain? - did you try that?

I have tried to setup through external toolchain and compilation worked smoothly, but I have one linker error that I do not know how to solve.

It happens when it try to execute part of code in nrf_sdh_ble.c

I assume RW_IRAM1 refers to memory settings in Keil, which is different from SES.

Thus, if I am correct, how should I define memory mapping in SES to make it work properly?

Sergey22 · Nov 27th 2019, 3:27pm

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

The steps for ARMCC are similar. However we recommend to do the port to gcc/clang manually because that way you save the time getting the external toolchain running on Embedded Studio and can directly start the porting process of the incomaptible files etc.

We would go with gcc, but the problem is that size of binary is crucial in our case and it creates binary which is twice larger with all optimizations: -Os, -flto, dead code removal, and using newlib-nano. Quite good explanation of it can be found here. I did not try clang however, do you have any use cases for comparing ouptu size from clang and ARMCC?

Sergey22 · Nov 29th 2019, 10:23am

Problem solved by adding additional arguments to the linker since SES did not import all of them from Keil.

awneil · Nov 29th 2019, 10:54am

For the benefit of others who may come here with the same question, could you give some more detail on which settings were missing?

And don't forget to update your cross-post on the Keil (ARM) forum ...

SEGGER - Nino · Nov 29th 2019, 11:25am

Hello,

Great to hear that you are up and running again.

Sergey22 wrote:

I did not try clang however, do you have any use cases for comparing ouptu size from clang and ARMCC?

Clang with default optimization settings is actually a bit worse than gcc in code size as the embedded support for clang was added more of an afterthought.
But Embedded Studio is not just another gcc toolchain. With our own standard library that is highly optimized for embedded targets and our SEGGER Linker together our toolchain is competitive with the competition that have ~~propitiatory~~ proprietary compilers and beats them in certain areas already. This will of course be improved further with future toolchain updates of Embedded Studio.

Here are some links showing the differences:
segger.com/products/development-tools/runtime-library/
segger.com/products/developmen…logy/tools/segger-linker/

blog.segger.com/the-segger-linker-replacing-the-gnu-linker/

blog.segger.com/floating-point-face-off/

blog.segger.com/floating-point…-2-comparing-performance/

Best regards,

Nino

awneil · Nov 29th 2019, 11:45am

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

propitiatory

* proprietary

SEGGER - Nino · Nov 29th 2019, 11:53am

Uups. This happes if you try autocorrection

awneil · Nov 29th 2019, 3:42pm

I heard the inventor of auto-correct died recently.

May he rust in piss.

Sergey22 · Dec 5th 2019, 1:14pm

awneil wrote:

For the benefit of others who may come here with the same question, could you give some more detail on which settings were missing?

And don't forget to update your cross-post on the Keil (ARM) forum ...

Here is the short guide how to import project from Keil to SES with external toolchain build:

1. Export Keil project to SES with external build.
2. Adjust ARMCC compiler settings since SES does not import them correctly. FPU and CPU.
forum.segger.com/index.php/Attachment/3717/

3. Add device files, SES does not import them.
forum.segger.com/index.php/Attachment/3718/

4. Transfer additional compiler option from Keil, because SES imports only few of them. Do the same for linker. NOTE! Some of the compiler option could be the same and you might also get error so remove repetitive options.
For me transfer of assembler commands were not necessary, but check them as well.
forum.segger.com/index.php/Attachment/3719/

5. Remove this command form compiler options, since it generates KEil specific files and produce error in SES.
forum.segger.com/index.php/Attachment/3720/

6. Add missing .lib files if you use them, SES does not import them as well. In my case it was nrf crypto .lib, which was missing.

7. Add user steps after each operation f.e. post link, post build. If you have them.

Should work now.

Sergey22 · Dec 5th 2019, 1:17pm

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

Sergey22 wrote:

I did not try clang however, do you have any use cases for comparing ouptu size from clang and ARMCC?

Clang with default optimization settings is actually a bit worse than gcc in code size as the embedded support for clang was added more of an afterthought.But Embedded Studio is not just another gcc toolchain. With our own standard library that is highly optimized for embedded targets and our SEGGER Linker together our toolchain is competitive with the competition that have ~~propitiatory~~ proprietary compilers and beats them in certain areas already. This will of course be improved further with future toolchain updates of Embedded Studio.

Here are some links showing the differences:
segger.com/products/development-tools/runtime-library/
segger.com/products/developmen…logy/tools/segger-linker/

blog.segger.com/the-segger-linker-replacing-the-gnu-linker/

blog.segger.com/floating-point-face-off/

blog.segger.com/floating-point…-2-comparing-performance/

Best regards,

Nino

Hello, I have tried to use SES to build project as well, but couldn't manage to compile. I will try again later. However, for now we will keep with ARMCC and SES, I will also look through the sources you provided. Thank you !

[SOLVED] Is it possible to use ARMCC toolchain with Segger Embedded Studio and easily migrate to SES from Keil?

[SOLVED] Is it possible to use ARMCC toolchain with Segger Embedded Studio and easily migrate to SES from Keil?

Sergey22 wrote:

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

awneil wrote:

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

Sergey22 wrote:

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

awneil wrote:

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

Sergey22 wrote:

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