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wirelessage · Joined: 08 Aug 2012 Posts: 34

Hello all:

Looking for a stable compiler version that people are comfortable with. There are so many fixes in every few releases.

I am using PIC18F2685.
I am happy with 4.14 but need to decide when to pull the plug for a new one!

Regards.

Ttelmah · Joined: 11 Mar 2010 Posts: 19589

On the V4 compilers, 4.141 was far superior to anything as early as 4.14.
There are not as many problems as you may think. 5.094 was quite good,
but 5.096, introduced one major bug to do with the handling or ROM *
pointers. This has been fixed, and generally there are fewer bugs with
each new release, unless you select very new chips (90% of the bugs
with new versions are things added to handle new chips).
Curremtly on a 150000 line program running in three linked chips, and
this compiles and runs without problems in 5.097.

wirelessage · Joined: 08 Aug 2012 Posts: 34

Thanks Ttelmah!

Appreciate your response.

I just see the updates every month on the compiler and that is why I felt skeptical. In general, I have liked version v4.141 (not 4.14 as I mentioned earlier).

Now plan to upgrade to 5.097.

Appreciate your support on these forums!

Ttelmah · Joined: 11 Mar 2010 Posts: 19589

There is one 'caveat'. If you do anything like directly accessing the
stack inside an interrupt, be aware that the change from V4 to V5
altered the layout of this data. So moving from V4 to V5 can give
hiccups in this case....

wirelessage · Joined: 08 Aug 2012 Posts: 34

Ttelmah,

Appreciate your response!
Are there any forums I can look at to understand this better.
What changed from V4 to V5 and how I can handle it in my code.

temtronic · Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 2:46 pm

Providing whatever version of compiler you're using WORKS with the PICs you're using, there's really no 'need' to upgrade.
..... 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'
Yes I know newer PICs can have neat peripherals, but the 46K22 suit me fine... I do have samples of new ones, use V5 compiler for them...

I haven't updated several programs, aps, Oses ,some for YEARS.
heck I still run V4.xxx of the compiler, even though I have 5.yyy.
Use MPLAB 8v92 (last version) as it's stable and I know how it works....
Have a PICkit3 for blasting PICs.

Getting too old to change I suppose.

Jay