USB host on PIC24/PIC32

[dbotkin]

I am thinking about switching to a PIC24 or PIC32 device to get rid of Vinculum in one of my products. The VNC-1 has some very irritating flaws that they seem uninterested in fixing; it works, but just barely. After my experience with that I'm very reluctant to see if I can coax the VNC-2 to do what I want. Can anyone tell me the current state of the CCS USB host stack? Is it viable for, say, FLASH drive and USB keyboard use? Or should I switch to Microchip's C compiler?

Also, bear with me... I'm not a "real" programmer, so I'm not really familiar with linkers and all. I'm wondering if I could create relocatable object file with Microchip C, just with the USB host functions -- then link that to the rest of the program written with CCS. Why? Well, first, I don't want to buy and maintain two compilers. I believe I read that the MC USB host framework would compile with their free version. Second, I really like CCS' built in functions and would hate to give them up. I have a several thousand lines of existing code I want to reuse rather than having to convert it all to use with another compiler.

I'm betting there are not a lot of people doing USB host or OTG, but maybe I'm wrong... any input is welcome. Especially about the viability of linking code from the two compilers.