bought a set of Pico 2

Looking forward to seeing how it goes! I've not tried RISC-V on Pico yet. Also will be keen to hear your impressions on Pico 2 performance in general. I have a couple of Pico 2's but not made the leap into using them over the original Pico so far (I wanted to make a RP2040 custom board, but nowadays I guess it would make more sense to focus on the newer chip).

There's some links to RISC-V info in the comments sections here:  Low-Cost Microcontrollers: Using a CH32V003 RISC-V Device! 

(since I know you'll probably be curious about the instruction set at some point). 

Great to hear your evaluation of Pico 2. I loved Pico 1, dont have the projects or skill to fully leverage its abilities. I also have a Pico W still in its wrapper. Im always playing catch up. 

My approach would be to use Visual Studio Code and the official Raspberry Pi Pico extension.

Within this extension, choose the "New Project" option. This gives you the opportunity to select RISC-V architecture and the Pico 2 chipset. Then it offers a couple of other template options, e.g timers, console etc.

Then select create.

Assuming the paths are sorted, it will insert various headers etc. and some boilerplate code which all compile etc.

Then explore, amend and learn...

success: mixed

• I was able to build a project, the traditional way and with the extension
• I wasn't able to debug, with either solution. The debugger is invoked, then fails (both wit ARM and RISC cores)

I wonder if its the openocd config files (presume there's a rp2xxx one for the new chip? But guess you've already checked that out!). (Typing from mobile, cannot easily check : (

That was definitely the issue when I tried it first. But I now have the "official pico latest openocd" with the correct files (both debug and register) for pico2

I am currently porting the very latest debugprobe / picoprobe to the XIAO board, to see if the debugger firmware version is the issue ...

Cool. Sounds like comms protocol issue. I'm recovering from some surgery, hence all my commenting online (what else can one do, other than this ). I have an official Pico debugger probe on my desk but will be another week or so before more mobile and able... Will be watching with interest, re your progress blogs / updates.

I look forward to seeing what you find out.

Wishing you a speedy recovery.

I did the port of the latest-latest picoprobe / debugprobe - fresh from github - for the XIAO board that I use as debugger. 
It works on a Pico 1, but not for Pico 2.

The openocd is the version that matches sdk 2.1.1, installed by the VSCode Pico Extension. It has (and uses) the Pico 2 configuration files. But the debug session fails. Communication to the debugger works. the debug into the Pico2 fails.

I'll try to make a new project that uses the ARM cores, and see if that works.