MSP430 - IAR vs gcc

Hi Baxter, I looked at the IAR IDE and used a 2kB restricted version only a short time. I think the full version is too expensive. Then, I took the GNU tools from mspgcc.sourceforge.net - very nice tool! If you know the GNU tools, no problem. If you need an IDE, take a look at

Regards, Andreas

Imagecraft also has a pretty good C compiler for the MSP430 family. It has an IDE, application builder, project manager, etc. There's a time limited full version (that reverts to code-limited after so many days) available at

I mostly use their AVR compiler but have & use their 430 and ARM products as well.

Quite a bit less expensive than the IAR and none of the "well, you can get the bug-fix release if you pay the last two year's annual maintenance fees" that we ran into when I was an IAR customer.

Baxter wrote: ....

KDevelop -

Regards Markus

I may end up going this direction as I program for Palm too. The general consensus is that the Palm implementation for Eclipse (PODS) is proceeding well but is not quite ready for prime time. (I'm using CodeWarrior)

For right now, the free IAR works as my program comes in at less than 1.5K and revisions I'm considering would make it even smaller.

If there's Consulting Opportunities, however, then it becomes a different ballgame.

You can always try out a couple of other IDEs:

#1: CrossWorks for MSP430 (flag: I wrote some of this) which is inexpensive compared to IAR.

-- Paul.

I saw Code Composer at TI, but I didn't see the free part - I'll have to go look again. 8K would probably carry all I need to do (unless I can start picking up some consulting).