One of the important toolchains for MSP430 is MSPGCC. It is a mature, good toolchain familiar to many developers. Unfortunately, the debugging and downloading support is weak, due to TI indifference. The USB JTAG communication requires proprietary TI DLL which fails to work reliably for all devices; this was reported not only for GCC but also for TI official toolchains. As a result, developers have a cookbook of approaches: different DLL versions for different MSP430 family members, and even third-party reimplementations of the JTAG/USB communication, due to TI refusing to provide reliable information sufficient for a stable implementation. Grant Edwards, one of the well-known and reputable developers in the MSP430 community wrote in a recent technical discussion:
I wish this reaches someone in the TI MSP430 marketing and technical organization who understands that developers need to be satisfied with the toolchain for the chips to sell. Do such people participate in this discussion forum?