Arm GNU Toolchain vs Raspberry Pi Pico SDK

Arm GNU Toolchain is a free, open-source set of tools for building C and C++ software for Arm processors. Its integrated, validated packages are based on GCC, Binutils, glibc, Newlib, and GDB, including a debugger. Variants cover bare-metal embedded development as well as Linux kernel and application work. Target processors include Arm A-, R-, and M-profile CPUs, such as Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M, and Neoverse. Arm lists cross-toolchains for Windows x86, Linux x86_64 and AArch64, and macOS x86_64 hosts. Releases are published twice a year and checked with the relevant source projects' test suites for regressions. Support is community-based on a best-effort basis; Arm does not promise prompt public-forum answers or fixes in later releases. The releases come without warranty and may not suit particular use cases. From release 15.3.Rel1 onward, new releases are published only through Arm's GitLab project; the developer.arm.com download page is deprecated.

Raspberry Pi Pico SDK is a free, BSD-3-Clause software development kit for writing C, C++, or assembly programs for RP-series microcontrollers. It supplies headers, hardware APIs, libraries, and a CMake build system, including access to Programmable I/O. Higher-level libraries cover timers, synchronization, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networking, USB, and multicore programming. The SDK targets RP2040 Arm Cortex-M0+ and RP2350 Arm Cortex-M33 and Hazard3 RISC-V devices. It can support simple applications, MicroPython runtime environments, and low-level software such as an on-chip bootrom. Quick-start instructions use CMake, Python 3, a native compiler, and a GCC cross compiler. Work is possible from the command line, Visual Studio Code, or CLion. Raspberry Pi’s VS Code extension adds project generation, CMake setup, version switching, compilation, and debugging. It supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, with documentation for SDK APIs and Pico W connectivity.