This completely slipped under my radar: Mentor Graphics acquired CodeSourcery’s toolchain products some time ago. I found out when I got to their site and it redirected me to Mentor. In my tutorials I often make use of the Lite editions of the Codesourcery toolchains, so this is the new site for reference: Sourcery CodeBench Lite Edition. It seems as nothing changed in terms of licence and functionality of the toolchains, I hope they continue to deliver freely these useful tools with the same frequency and quality.
See also:
[EDIT 2011-12-20] Mentor Graphics decided to make a change in their site. Now in order to download their toolchain you have to register an account, which means giving them first name, last name, email, phone, company, job function, and country. So, even though the download is gratis, they are not delivering the tools as freely as before.
Entries
Andy Tai
2011/10/13
GNU toolchains must be under the GPL…
Balau
2011/10/13
Yeah, but GPL can’t stop them from making me pay to get them. It just forces them to provide me also the source together with the binary.
rbdixon
2011/12/13
Balau… thanks for noticing the change. I work for Mentor and work closely with the team on product strategy. There are no plans to change the availability of Sourcery CodeBench Lite. As before they are available as free software for no cost to whomever wishes to download them. Most of the Lite toolchains just got bumped up to gcc 4.6 in a release that went out this month. As always the full source is available as well.
The name change and a lot of improvements to the website are the only really notable changes.
Nate
2011/12/20
However, you wont find a link to the ARM Lite Cross Compiler on their site. It’s pretty clear to me that they will no longer be supporting CodeBench Lite Edition for ARM :-/ Plenty of other links like IA32…
Balau
2011/12/20
@Nate wait, the IA32 version etc. is the architecture of the host, ARM is the architecture of the target, hence they are “cross”-compilers.
Then, I went to the site trying to link you to the page and there’s a form asking me my name and phone. Well, screw that.
Balau
2011/12/20
@rbdixon
Except that now to download them I have to give Mentor my name, phone, … Or I have to lie. If I try to navigate from your site and try to download the Lite version, I am greeted by a form asking me all that. In my blog posts I repetitively suggested using your toolchain, but now I am uncomfortable doing that, because I am also implying that my readers should give their credentials to you (or lie about it).
Contrary to what you said, this is an obvious change in availability.
rbdixon
2011/12/20
Balau… I’m sorry find the registration requirement burdensome. On the other side of that registration form are the same toolchains that were there earlier. We’ve also taken care to make sure that automated build scripts that depend on pulling down source or binaries to operate will continue to be able to do so.
Nate
2011/12/20
No, I was referring to the right cross compiler for compiling on IA32 (host) for ARM (target). I see that a few links have been added for ARM today – thank you
The form is still a major let down. I wish that Mentor Graphics would make it optional. I want to believe that CodeBench is the best choice (that’s why I’m here) but misdirection (forms, hiding links, …) have a way of making people believe that you are not honest or even interested in developing good works but more interested in money any way you can.
I will submit to Mentor Graphics only when I can see for myself that they are really useful.
Moses
2012/01/16
You might check out the new gcc project by ARM here: https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded
I found this project from this page: http://www.onarm.com/cmsis/download/18/cmsis-2-1-patch5-templates-for-gcc-arm-embedded-4-6/
Looks like this should probably become the default open-source tool-chain for ARM processors. No registration required, and there are binaries for windows and linux as well as source.
Balau
2012/02/04
Thank Moses, I checked it out and it seems usable as much as the Mentor’s product. I am planning to write some blog post about writing bare-metal programs for Cortex-M with this toolchain.