Software debugging tools for custom micro-controller core

Yes, Universities. In a place far far away, long long time ago, we did all those in group projects. Just find a few students to do it.

If I were you, I'd hire somebody to port Gnu binutils and Gdb.

Is the custom microcontroller based on any particular family of processor core? There are Forth systems for many processors. Forth has been used as a bring-up in many a custom hardware situation, even totally new processors.

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Not needed

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Not really needed but feasible.

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When you are debugging one word at a time the breakpoint is automatically the completion of a word.

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Might be a bit trickier but is often possible.

Forth Inc and MPE can probably help out (see their links from my web-site's Forth pages). If you are doing a completely new processor you could build your own Forth on it and grow the system from there, right out to the application.

See Cross32 and XDASM on our web site:

These are a retargetable assembler and disassembler.

We've written all these, see also:

Stephen

There is AS assembler, that is open-source

and you can also use almost any macro assembler to create object code

Target Source code debug needs a little target HW assistance, what do you have there ? The other tasks are simulator ones, and I think there are also table- Simulators out there.

Lattice Mico8 is also opensource, tho their assembler is pretty basic, (even for an assembler)

What core is this based on / close to ?

-jg

There are many companies that make that sort of tool - IAR, ByteCraft, ImageCraft, Green Hills, and dozens more, that make compiler and debugger suites that target a range of cpus. The trouble is, they will want a large market (or a lot of money up-front, or both) before porting their tools.

As others have pointed out, there are a number of re-targetable toolchains available for you to do the work yourself. And you can always think slightly differently, such as by aiming for Forth rather than traditional C.

You could also turn the problem on its head. Study gcc, and it's internal code representations. Look at some example implementations roughly matching the size of core you are looking for. Then design your core to be a good match for gcc. Similarly with debugging - look at gdb, and make your hardware debugger core a match for gdb's protocols.