You are probably asking yourself which compiler for your launchpad/msp430, you should use. Me personally, I don’t really care which one works Better, I just need one to compile for my launchpad and supports the chips I use.
some similarities –
Both create files for your msp430 chip,
both are compiled with GCC 4.x+
Both use libc for the msp430.
They pretty much fill the same function.
Now some of the major differences, mspgcc4 is stable and can be used with production code, Uniarch is still being developed and is changing a lot still. mspgcc4 supports most of the chips for msp430 except the very newest (since it is hard to add newer chips with out rebuilding and adding a lot of code). Uniarch is trying to make adding chip support as easy as possible, and unifying all the branches of mspgcc. Even coding is slightly different, interrupts are coded different and even the headers you use may be different(FYI).
So which one should I choose?
Well that is a tough question, what are your goals?
are you trying to get one just up and running or do you need support for the newest chips? — Have you compiled programs from source or are you new to linux?
Will you give up after you get an error or will you work through it and figure it out?
Well if you need just something up and running just to be able to compile a few programs for your launch pad , I would suggest using mspgcc4 , using the build script or using the pre-built binaries. pre- built binaries, to install, you just add a folder to usr/local/ and call it mspgcc4 and unpack your binaries in there and that it. The build script is pretty self explanatory, and it compiles everything from source . I have used it multiple times and works as long as you have all the dependencies. IE(ncurses-dev, cvs, lidreadline-dev etc…)
A very simple way to get it up and running -
Now if you want access to the New uniarch mspgcc, that supports the new chips like msp430g2452 or others. you will need to go the long and hard route of patching compiling linking and more compiling lol. but there are some great directions to do it. Here (Thank you sergio). But it is not for the faint of heart….lol /JK
