RE: want an sdcc howto?

> I'd really like to see more interest in sdcc on this list, because it's
> the only viable free/opensource high-level language compiler that spans
> both 16F and 18F, and deserves a place as the 'reference' high level
> language for PIC.

I would like to know more about SDCC as well. According to the guys
in SiLabs it is quite okay for the 8051 family. Keil C51 is so
expensive and we have only the 4k free versions. For the PIC side, 
I think a working SDCC will be greatly appreciated. It may not need 
to be as good as Hitech PICC. Our PICC version is too old. We do
have a full MPLAB C18 courtesy of Microchip but my colleague tells
me it is not so good. Anyway I do not expect SDCC to be up to the
level of any commercial product any time soon. But to have more
choices is great.

I think C is quite good for fast development for non-timing-critical
(can be mission critical though) applications for the PIC. Actually
all my previous production firmware are all in C (Hitech PICC 7.85).
They are running in the fields in large quantities and quite reliably 
even though I consider myself quite bad in programming. They are quite
simple in C though and the codes are all less than 2k words (16C72A and
16F872).

I am now using assembly for the current project (my first assembly
project!) because it is timing-critical (in us) and I was using
a low speed PIC. The development time is much longer and I got
much more bugs to solve.

Regards,
Xiaofan