PCWH ide

diode_blade · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 2:56 am

Sorry if this is in wrong section, Just want to pick (no pun intended Wink

) peoples thoughts. I have been using the PCM and PCH command line compilers with MPLAB and MPLAB X quite happily but have thought about purchasing the PCWH ide. As my maintenance renewal is due next month I would like to know from people who have been using the ide what your thoughts and advice are.

With thanks
Dave

newguy · Joined: 24 Jun 2004 Posts: 1909

I've never actually used MPLAB ever - I've only ever used the CCS IDE. I like it and it does what I need.

Ttelmah · Joined: 11 Mar 2010 Posts: 19549

It's very difficult to be really fair here, since they all have problems...
MPLAB has the advantages of the stopwatch, and the simulator.
MPLAB-X, is really unreliable. On big chips even the current release insists on hanging. Older releases were worse. It is also very intrusive in it's operation, insisting on scanning directories that you don't want to include in it's operation. I consider it to be a massive step 'backwards' from MPLAB....
The CCS IDE, has some nice features. Good help, Quite usable debug etc.. However some parts of the debug operation are really annoying. For instance if you hover over an item, and it gives you it's definitions, it is almost impossible to actually select one of the sub items to look at. Then when displaying values it insists on dropping out of this before you have a chance to actually read what you want!. Suspect this may relate to machine speed (I'm running a 32GB I7 at 4.2GHz on an SSD), but it is annoying. There are some oddities. If I have really large projects (20+ files, 40000+ lines), it tends when you open the project to 'forget' what files are actually part of the project. However select the main file, compile this, and it remembers again. It does work quite well though, but there are quite a few features I'd like to see improved.....
Quite a bit depends on how much extra the IDE will be as a maintenance update?. It'll also take some getting used to.

diode_blade · Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 4:46 am

Thankyou Newguy and Ttelmah for your feedback much appreciated.
Kind regards
Dave