I am a pro AVR developer using the Atmel Studio 6. Recently I have plans to shift to ARM development and ordered a LPC2148 ARM7 processor from NXP semiconductors.
Firstly, ARM learning curve is really steep, that I can manage.
The main problem I am facing is the lack of a unified free IDE that will enable me to work with the processor.
The candidates I found are:
- Keil MDK 5 for ARM, which is not free
- Crossworks for ARM, which is both premium and has header files missing and is really confusing
- emIDE, which is free but the IDE is very primitive and needs a lot of expertise to develop
- LPCXpresso, which is something I have seen in no tutorials
There may be other IDEs. I don't know about them. Can someone please help me in finding a free version of an IDE which is smart and helps in coding for the ARM7 platform that is my micro-controller?