I got introduced to the PSoC 5 chip by the freeSOC project on Kickstarter (and smARtDUINO, which is compatible with it). They are part of the Arduino community.

I've tried installing PSoC Creator with wine, with both Mono and Microsoft .NET. That didn't work. Then, I tried, and succeded in installing the separate .msi packages, but the program crashes at startup (I'll try to investigate those).

Now, some questions:

• Does the .exe installer do anything important other than running the .msi installers?
• How much does your code use native Win32 .dll's? Would it be possible to use only .NET APIs, so as to enable running the program on Mono on Linux or OSX?
• Have you considered open sourcing any parts of your PSoC software? I know you've at least used compilers et' al based on the GPL'd gcc compiler suite. Is there any really important IP that mandates keeping the no cost sofware proprietary?

I'm sure you know about the success of Arduino and friends. The reason those 8 bit AVR based chips have been much more popular among hobbyists than similar PICs, is the fact that Atmel released their IDE to users at no cost. That is what you have done. Now, what has enabled the multi platform and really easy to use Arduino IDE (and Unix like cmd tools), is the fact that the AVRs are well supported by open source tools like GCC (which Atmel contributes to) and AVRDude.

Now, the Cortex-M3 in PSoC 5 is already supported by GCC (which you use through Sourcery G++), but the programmer protocol and the CPLD hardware configuration have no such support in the open source world (there is an abandoned project from 2006 to create such tools). I urge you to consider the Open Source HardWare movement and the hobbyists using linux, OSX, Android, (and Windows) who are constantly inventing new ways to create and better themselves and the world around us. I know you and them would have much to gain from each other, if you welcome them by realeasing some (simple) portable open source tools to usefully use you hardware in non-Win32 environments, with or without GUIs. You could start by releasing a simple open source tool to upload pre compiled binaries to your hardware, which would be useful for user side firmware upgrades etc. Even just documenting the protocol would help, I'm sure some of the freeSOC board owners will start developing tools if given the chance. I' know I would like to buy a freeSOC board if I can use it without the hassle of installing Windows in a VM, I want the user of my hardware or code to have free and easy to use tools on the platform of their choosing.

Thanks, and sorry for this lengthy post. I hope this will be read by the right people ;)

This on an earlier post -

Can I run PSoC Designer on a Linux or UNIX based system or use a virtual machine with these systems?
Cypress does not test PSoC Designer using any Linux or UNIX based systems. PSoC Designer is not formally tested using virtual machine configurations with any Windows, Linux, or UNIX based OS, although Cypress has been notified by customers that they have successfully used virtual machine applications to run PSoC Designer on Linux and Mac OS systems.
For more information on the system requirements for PSoC Designer, see the PSoC Designer requirements page at:
www.cypress.com/go/designerrequirements

Regards, Dana.

Yes, well, installing and using Windows in a VM is cumbersome, and I'm not after any official support, just some pointers for helping myself and others, and general opinions on psoobily having some kind of support for non-windows environments.

It might even be easy to port the software to work on top of Mono, or maybe they make some deal with CodeWeavers (commercial developer of wine).

And by possbily open sourcing some or all of the IDE, some one else will surely port it and extend it in new directions etc. All in all, it would be a big win for everyone, with hopefully minimal effort on the part of Cypress.

Well I attempted to install the PSoC Creator.exe on Kubuntu with WINE and was told that the file was invalid.   After reading this forum I decided I should install PSoC Creator.exe on my Windows 7 x64 machine and move on to development.  Well, that all resulted in an invalid executable file (see image).

Cypress PSoC IDE developers please port the code to Mac and Debian Linux or open the source so that these communities can extend the capabilities of this great tool.

Thanks.