Pommie,
Their HW tools (easypic, icd etc) all support ICD (so you can debug) but ONLY via their sw .. so if you want to use easypic to debug app, you can only do that using mikroC or mikroBasic or MikroPascal ..
The tools come with cli version of programmer as long as with stand alone programmer so you can make most of the other IDE's to burn the hex using mikroe tools (for e.g. CSC C ide)...
The software (mikroC, mikroBasic, mikroPascal ...) is not compatible with MPLAB nor with any other ICD but their own, so you can debug only on mikroE devices. You can add tools so you can make easy way to burn HEX directly from MikroC for example using PicKit2 ... but it's not as nice as from mplab
That aside, MikroC, MikroBasic, MikroPascal come with HUGE amount of libraries for "EVERYTHIGN" .. the code they generate is nice / fast / small ... and all compilers come in demo version that is liimited to 2K .. the price is not that high (100$ iirc) ... the easy* tools are GREAT .. (I have easyPic4), the amount of additional test boards is cool and they have libraries for all of them in mikroC...
The BAD side is that - everything is closed source ...
- the firmware on their ICD - closed source
- the libraries are closed source (you cannot modify them .. they are what they are and if for e.g. you want to use different pin setup - well .. bummer)
From their forum, I see that they are porting the compiler to LINUX and making cli version of compiler so that they can make compiler and gui separate. There is also info on the forum that they tried to communicate with microchip in order to make their tools compatible with mplab / pickit2 and that microchip was uncooperative (I really do not have specifics) ...
All in all, I have purchased mikroC and it is really great tool .. but I use it only for 16F pic's .. for everything else I use C18 or C30