I've been developing on NXP 89C52X2's and LPC for a while now using Metalink, but I decided to take a look at Silabs controllers, mainly for the inbuilt debugging tools. However, as I understand it, the Silabs debugger (ICE) doesn't support the output from Metalink. I believe the only toolchains that integrate with the Silabs tools are...

1. Keil
2. HiTech
3. Raisonance
4. Tasking
5. SDCC
6. IAR

This project will ultimately be for a potential commercial project, but I currently have no budget for Keil, so I have no real desire to use the evaluation Keil tools.

My real question is, are any of the other toolchains (that are 'free' like SDCC, or usable in commercial projects, like HiTech evaluation) suitable for assembler development, or are the assemblers really only suited for assembling the output from the C compilers (for example, I'm sure I've read somewhere, although I can't find where now, that the assembler supplied with SDCC can't really be used for coding in assembler as it lacks certain features).

I have searched around, but most discussions focus on debates about the "freeness" of Keil, or programming in C.

I've managed to get myself a bit confused with all of this, so any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Rob.