Keil vs TrueSTUDIO IDE

[Bogdan Golab]

Posted on January 19, 2018 at 16:19

I have been using Keil IDE for years (as a hobbyist).

Maybe someone who knows both Keil & TrueStudio could share some details about pros & cons.

I know that the primary difference is lack of licensing limits in TS (Keil - 32kB for non F0/L0 MCUs). I have Segger programmer/debugger (read that some  features may need it on TrueStudio).

[ax0018]

Posted on May 15, 2018 at 16:31

For educational purposes it would be nice if TS had a pure assembly project option, so that target MCU and debugger can be selected and then everything else is done by the user from scratch. This can easily be done in Keil.

[Yevpator]

Hello Andrew,

Would you mind please sharing what you mainly disliked in uVision? I see the most updated version is MDK 5.2.6. Have you ever tried it?

I am compelled to work Atollic now and after working with it for a month I can tell you that I hate it:

1. GDB Debugger - WTF ? When I press step in, it goes backwards. Setting a breakpoint in a dead routine, it stops debugging in absolutely other place and etc. I just don't trust it.
2. IDE -looks nice, but on the other hand, too complicated, not intuitive.
3. Not stable - too many crashes, where I can't either build or debug until IDE restart (I am using 1 version before the latest).
4. Sometimes it changes by itself some project configurations .
5. I tried to use the latest version, but failed to set up the project (not backward compatible)

I am thinking to convince my boss to move to the MDK, so I am interested to know what are the features you're missing there?

[Andrew Neil]

I find the search, navigation, and browsing facilities particularly lame.

And some of the auto-format features were broken.

I haven't used it for a while now (been using Segger Embedded Studio lately), so I forget the precise details ...

ISTR that it kept applying the language auto-formatting inside comment?

"I see the most updated version is MDK 5.2.6"

You mean 5.26

"Have you ever tried it?"

No - still on 5.25. But I don't think the above features have significantly changed?

[Yevpator]

Hi Andrew,

I think I know you from LI - I always enjoy reading your comments. Thank you for spending your time to answer myself.

Actually I didn't claim 5.26 is better than 5.25, but just asked you. I personally had been using IAR for 10 years at least , until a few months ago. I think it also can be called lame, according to your definition. (-: I personally can get along with a relatively poor IDE ("lame"), since on my priority list, stability and debugger's quality and reliability have higher priority than GUI.

As for the Embedded Studio - it is interesting for me. I recently downloaded it and was impressed it is not as "hard" as Eclipse - i could open the application very quickly.

If you have one more minute for me, would you be so kind as to share some highlights of Embedded Studio pro's and con's, or maybe you could just answer these questions ?

1. Which debugger do they use: Segger's Ozone or GDB? I just visited their web-site and didn't see an answer to this question. How stable and reliable does it feel for you? I
2. Compiler , did you chose Clang/LLVM or GCC and why?
3. Is the Studio a proprietary IDE of Segger or also Eclipse kind ? Did you like it? Do you like it more than Eclipse ? I guess you do , otherwise you would not pay $1K for it?

Thank you once again!

[Andrew Neil]

Yes, the big plus of uVision is the debugging, which "just works" - unlike the nightmare of getting it to work in Eclipse.

And, of course, you get the ARM Compiler.

1. I have only used SES with JLinks (mainly the embedded JLinks on Nordic dev kits) - and that also "just works".
2. I have just used the GCC toolchain - because that's what Nordic support.
3. AIUI, it's based on Rowley CrossStudio - so it is "proprietary", although it does look & feel quite similar to Eclipse.
4. It does have some nice features, but is still let down by its browsing, searching, and auto-highlight.
5. I didn't pay for it: I used the free licence for Nordic development (which is rather like the free Keil version for ST's Cortex M0s).

[Yevpator]

Thank you once again and good luck !

[CCard.1]

HI Guys, this might be a fairly old thread but just for anyone else who may still be interested in this. These are opinions on the two.

Pros of Keil

1. First off for me the most important thing is the debugger. I find the use of the debugger is invaluable. In this Keil wins hands down. Unfortunately my workplace is using Truestudio and a lot of the legacy projects are still in Truestudio. Debugging with the gdb debugger in Truestudio is an absolute nightmare to say the least. Sometimes it refuses to connect to the chip or it fails to write to the flash. Just to be sure I ran the debugger of each IDE with the same hardware setup on both platforms to see how the debuggers would perform and sure enough Keil was brilliant and gdb was very poor to say the least with connection dropping out and sometime refusing to connect.
2. The other thing found much more easier in Keil is setting up a new project with all the available Packs (so similar to the STMCubeMX packages e.g. CMSIS) and changing processor or upgrading projects was much less painful. Migrating projects or starting new projects in Truestudio is not so straight forward.
3. Compiling somtimes in Truestudio is really buggy. It fails to open files sometimes and on occasion will fail compilation and then if you just compile again with no changes it is successful.

Pros of Truestudio

1. The main issue and the main drawback I found with Keil is the development environment. It does seem to be little bit outdated compared to Truestudio. Little things like hoovering over a variables and seeing it's contents is not possible in Keil. I like to also have a dark theme with all my keywords coloured in certain colours and Truestudio is great for this and you can download predefined themes or create your own. The editor seems a lot more intuitive with a lot more features compared to Keil.
2. The new version STM32CubeIDE as someone already has mentioned is now free. So that is a big plus.

There are obviously a lot more differences between the two but I find that they are minor issues and probably don't need to be mentioned.