Just Getting Started: General Questions

I'm just getting started, I'm new to the Altera Cyclone V SoC, I have some experience with Eclipse (TI OMAP), and I'm far from a C expert. Although my first language was machine code entered through a hex keypad (many, many moons ago).

I purchased a DE0-Nano-SoC board for home use, its got a Cyclone V (5CSEMA4U23C6) dual Cortex A9. (To get up to speed at Work)!

I downloaded and installed the "SoCEDSSetup-15.0.1.60-windows.exe" and got a DS-5/Eclipse Ultimate Edition 30 day license.

I used the "Altera Soc Embedded Design Suite User Guide" to get both a GCC Bare Metal and an ARM Compiler Bare Metal C "Hello World" program running.

Total success!

first question: Is the "Altera Edition" just a subset of the "Ultimate Edition" of the toolkit? Cause I'm using the Ultimate Edition and I don't want to be missing anything "Altera" related that's either required or is going to make my life more difficult.

second question: If money is not an issue (at work), then what are the real differences/pros and cons associated with using the ARM Compiler tool chain as opposed to the GCC tool chain, I mean in terms of capabilities, and things like integration with the Altera Hardware tool suites? Keep in mind that my first deliverable application will be bare metal, after that a commercially available RTOS will be ported and used.

third question: I'm having a hard time getting past a bare metal "hello world" program using the ARM compiler. I'm trying to use the "Hardware Library" for bare metal development using the ARM compiler tool chain. I figured getting a few lines of text out of the UART would be a good place to start, and then move onto substituting an alternative "printf" routine to get things out of the same UART, that would put a smile on my face and get me past the "idiot" feeling I'm having right now. is there any documentation, previous threads, or specific examples someone can point me to? I've tried copying the include and source code files from

"C:\altera\15.0\embedded\ip\altera\hps\altera_hps\hwlib" but had to start guessing at what the correct defines were to clear up some of the errors associated with specific instructions not being supported (in some asm( ) statements) and deleting some of the ".s" files in order to get things through a build, but things just did not work. Also some of the examples that are supplied seem to indicate that they are targeted for the ARM tool set but seem to use the GCC tool set.

I believe I may have to take the hwlib questions to another thread but any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Billy