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From: self on 25 Jul 2010 22:49
Hello,

I'm also a linux user for most of my work. On the other hand, Windows
is not that bad or expensive so I just dual boot. Actel is doing a
great job for a smaller company by releasing their mainline
development code as a linux version but some of the outlier tools,
like FlashPro, are still Windows only as you mention.

Lately I have been playing around with the Arm/Amba IP libraries for
Actel FPGAs. I'm really impressed by what they get out there for
free. The SoftConsole tool for writing the embedded C code is really
practical and includes an integrated source code debugger that uses
the FlashPro cable to access the On Chip Debug (OCD) hardware of the
Arm processor. It is based on open source tools but it is still a lot
of stuff to get working together. I'm willing to meet them halfway
and boot over to Windows 7 to get all that.

What I would really like is for Actel to publish the register level
API for the FlashPro download cables. Then Open Source people could
do their magic and write a really good linux driver. Linux drivers are
not that hard to do now with libusb allowing user space drivers.

Anyway, I just like it when FPGA vendors put out good solid software.
Linux support is really secondary for me.

Pete
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