Finally understanding the nature of SES version 5.42a

[Bret Foreman]

I had an email exchange with Sebastian Brosch at Segger where he explained that SES version 5.42a is NOT a down-rev version of the IDE. In fact, it's an independent fork. In other words, it's a separate product developed and supported by Nordic. At Segger they call it the Nordic Embedded Studio or NES and they DO NOT support it.

So to the Nordic support engineers, please don't tell people to look to Segger for support of the Nordic version of SES (the NES).

I think it would also be wise to move the NES installer to the Nordic website so people don't confuse it with a Segger product.

[Vidar Berg]

Hello,

It is correct that there was a Nordic edition of SES which was distributed by us, but it was only for use with the nRF connect SDK (has since been replaced with our VS code extension). For our nRF5 SDK we have always directed users to download it from Segger: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/segger-embedded-studio 

Version 5.42a is recommended for use with nRF5 SDK 17.1.0 because it was the version we used during the release testing, but any version between 5.42a and 6.20 is likely to work. In v6.20 they removed the legacy Embedded Studio Runtime Library used in our examples and is the main reason our examples will not build out-of-the-box with SES v6.20 and later. 

Best regards,

Vidar

[Bret Foreman]

Well, I asked them if I could buy their latest SES and have the Nordic SDK supported by them and they said no. I asked if they could support 5.42a if I bought a Segger license and they said no to that too. So it looks like there is no development path starting with the free version of SES and graduating to the paid/support version.

This is quite different from the old Keil model where you could buy a license and get support from them. I'm not really complaining about using VS Code, just pointing out that SES is not as one would expect from the previous path with Keil.

[Vidar Berg]

It seems like he thought you were using the Nordic edition of SES. That would explain his response. But you are not. You should still get the free license as before.

[Bret Foreman]

I have the free license, of course. But who is supporting the IDE? He was pretty clear that they DO NOT support version 5.42a.

[Vidar Berg]

They will not support you with the Nordic edition, but they should provide support for the regular edition. Maybe this was based on some misunderstanding?