All DatabasesMacTech Vol 10-1994
CodeWarrior
Volume Number: 10
Issue Number: 1
Column Tag: Tools of the Trade
CodeWarrior from Metrowerks
A glimpse at a whole new development environment that goes
head-to-head with Symantec.
By Dennis R. Cohen, Claris Corporation
Macintosh programmers started hearing rumors about Macintosh with PowerPC
systems about a year before this writing and encountered sessions concerning these
new models at Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference six months ago. Native
development tools were, to say the least, surrounded more by mystery than fact and the
cross-development tools and environments presented received a less than enthusiastic
reception. Unannounced at the WWDC and known to very few of the attendees,
Metrowerks (a Canadian company which had previously focused on the academic
market with Modula-2 and Pascal compilers) had decided to go “mainstream” with C,
C++, and Pascal for both the 680x0 Macintoshes and M60x Macintoshes (PowerPCs).
CodeWarrior is a choice of CD-ROMs containing up to nine compilers, two debuggers,
PowerPlant (an object-oriented application framework and PowerPlant Constructor,
the Application Builder), and Apple’s ToolServer and Source Server with all of the
standard (non-compiler/assembler) MPW tools. Pricing was not finalized at the time
of this writing but Greg Galanos, Metrowerks President and CEO, says, “street price
will be between $200 and $400, depending on the version.” There will be update and
subscription programs available as well, à la ETO and Jasik’s Debugger; however,
pricing of these programs has yet to be determined. See the section on Pricing and
Availability at the end of the article.
Starting from the premise that their offering had to be available at or before
release of the PowerPC, Metrowerks put more restrictions around their product. They
decided that it should be at least as easy to use, fast, and as powerful as the very
popular Symantec offerings; provide an application framework (written in C++)
which facilitated application development and was competitive with (or superior to)
THINK Class Library, MacApp, and Bedrock; and that, through testing with things like
the Plum-Hall suites for ANSI C and C++ compatibility and use in development by a
focused group of key Macintosh developers, it wouldbe “industrial-strength” at
introduction.
Figure 1 “Muscle” being debugged in Metrowerks C++
At this time, it looks as though Metrowerks has succeeded in meeting its goals
with CodeWarrior’s parts. The environment and compilers are written with
Metrowerks C, and the application framework with Metrowerks C++ (just a switch
setting in the preferences). Similarly, the debugger is written in C++ using
PowerPlant (the application framework) as its basis.
Users familiar with Symantec’s THINK C or Borland’s MS Windows offerings will
find the Metrowerks environment very comfortable. Development uses a
“project-centric” approach and the projects can be used with either the 68K- targeted
compiler or the PowerPC- targeted compiler. The debugger employs an interface
similar to THINK’s debugger and SourceBug. The editor, like those beloved to so many
Windows developers, employs optional colorization of comments and keywords and
doesn’t require a project to be open to edit a file; otherwise, it is typical of other
Macintosh programming editors. The ToolServer link is through a “ToolServer
Worksheet” window, allowing some of the flexibility of MPW’s Worksheet. Below, you
will see a screen dump off a 16” monitor that has the debugger running on a sample
project that accompanies PowerPlant (Figure 1). Please be aware that some controls
may change position slightly between now and the release. The project window is also
bound to change slightly to incorporate features in the shipping release.
Editor
As I’ve mentioned above, the Metrowerks editor is fairly typical of professional
Macintosh programming editors with a few nice additions. One is the above-mentioned
optional color-coding of keywords and comments (which is carried over into the
debugger source windows). As in the Finder, you can -click on the window name and
get the full path in a popup. You can enable or disable “dynamic scrolling,” where the
text scrolls as you move the thumb rather than after you’ve finished moving it. There
is a status area at the bottom of the window telling what line you’re on, that if you
click in it gets you a “Go To Line” dialog box. There are also two small popups at the
bottom left of the window, one which displays a list of both system and application
header files included in the window as well as selections to “touch” (mark for
compilation) and toggle SYM-file generation and one which lists all the functions in the
file (option clicking it displays them in alphabetic order). Selecting a function from
the function list popup moves that function into view without moving the cursor.
Selecting a header from the header list popup will open that header file. This popup is
duplicated in the Project window for each file in the project.
The short answer to the obvious question for you BBEdit/ObjectMaster fans is,
“No, there is no plug-in editor capability in this release,” but that may not be true of
v1.0.
Compilers & Linker
Here the Metrowerks product really shines. The compilers are
industrial-strength with good code-generation and optimization and even faster
performance than the THINK C Compiler/Linker, often held up as the “turn-around”
standard. While I am a cynic who believes that no product of any consequence ships
without some bugs, I have encountered none in this release of the code generator, even
after exercising it with some of the pathological cases reported on the Internet that
trip up Symantec C++ 6.0.1. Since Templates will not show up before the 1.0 release,
I cannot report on them here. For those MacApp programmers among you, the C++
compiler will also allow you to build MacApp 3.1 - the new pointer based version of
MacApp that uses universal headers and support the 68K Macintosh and Macintosh with
PowerPC systems. To accomplish this, all of the 68K based compilers support
function-level segmentation (#pragma segment in C/C++, $SEGMENT in Pascal) if
“Fast Link” is selected, which it should always be unless there is not enough memory
to link your application.
The Toolbar, in addition to giving you a customizable push-button panel of menu
equivalents, is also the location of the status information during compiles and builds
(Figure 2). Since this is a floating window which obeys the Human Interface guidelines
for such things, it disappears when you put the environment in the background during
a build. Frankly, the things I have built have all been less than 50,000 lines so far and
never took more than about a minute to build from scratch on a IIfx and incremental
builds are just a few seconds. Due to non-disclosure agreements concerning prototype
PowerPC hardware, I can’t say how fast the compiler is there (but I was very happy
with it).
Figure 2 A build captured in progress.
Note the status information in the Toolbar.
As this is being written, we are dealing with pre-release materials and the
Pascal compiler is the least mature of the compilers. Nevertheless, it appears to be (I
only had it for a few days before this article’s deadline) a useful and usable compiler
that implements MPW Pascal minus the object extensions. In other words, you have all
the type-casting extensions and other non-object syntactic extensions to the Pascal
language. Additionally, you get something which C programmers have held over Pascal
programmers’ heads up until now, inline assembly support.
Inline assembly language support is present in both the C and Pascal compilers;
however, it is at the function level only. You can declare a function as:
long asm foo()
{
}
and code it in assembler; however, you cannot inline blocks within a function.
During a compile with any of the compilers, error messages accumulate in a
Message window. Selecting an error message and double clicking, option clicking or
pressing Enter will bring the editor window forward positioned to the error line.
As implied above, the Linker is fast (a shade faster than the one in THINK C 6.0)
and is as efficient as the MPW Linker in removing unreferenced functions.
Debugger
The debugger is reminiscent of SourceBug, MacBrowse, and the THINK Debugger.
You click in the border area to set and clear breakpoints on a line of code. You have
panes which show global and local variables and the calling chain. None of this is
exactly new ground, but it is a well-done blend of the better source debugger features
in a comfortable and consistent interface. The debugger on the 68K-based machines
will debug only applications; however, the debugger on the PowerPC will debug both
applications and shared libraries (Code Fragment Manager).
One nice feature is the “File Browser” window. This window lets you browse
through all the files in the project and set breakpoints in files not being displayed in
the Program Browser window. As in the main environment, you have a Toolbar
available if you wish.
For those who desire more power in their debugging, such as those writing
standalone code resources, Jasik Designs’ “The Debugger” works quite well with the
optional SYM files generated by the Metrowerks compilers as does Voodoo Monkey.
Obviously, Macsbug and TMON Pro can also handle assembly level interaction.
Documentation
Metrowerks documentation, if the prerelease manuals have been at all indicative,
is going to set a new standard for comparison. They have a combination of the best
features of the tutorial approach employed in their academic market Pascal compiler
with some of the reference-material coverage common to the THINK and MPW manuals.
It will be interesting to see, at least in the developer release, how documentation
exclusively on disk (Apple’s DocViewer) will go over with the developer community as
the only printed materials will be a Quick Reference Card and a 36-page “Getting
Started” booklet. I have mixed emotions - I really like the idea of not having to make
more shelf space for manuals and the convenience of electronic searching; however, I
don’t normally read manuals at the computer (as opposed to looking things up).
One e specially nice touch is the collection of “Tech Notes” written by people
working on or with the developing software. These cover topics that don’t really fit in
anywhere else, such as “Calling MPW C” or “Working with ToolServer”.
Other Pieces
ToolServer support is very nicely done, at least to my tastes. PowerPlant is a
clean, easily-learned framework and the PowerPlant Constructor is a straightforward
view/pane editor. SourceServer support is minimal, consisting of CheckIn, CheckOut,
and honoring ckid resources in the editor. The environment includes a hook to
THINK Reference 2.0, for those of you who have it and MPW’s 411 is available through
ToolServer.
Pricing & Availability
The Developer release is scheduled for January, 1994 in the three flavors
described below:
• Bronze (680x0 host and target): Pascal, C, C++, PowerPlant, PowerPlant
Constructor (ViewEditor), ToolServer, SourceServer, all the standard MPW
tools except compilers and asm, documentation on line (DocViewer),
68K debugger, ResEdit & Macsbug on a CD with a 36pg booklet. Street price is to
be $199.
• Silver (PowerPC host and target): Pascal, C, C++, PowerPlant, PowerPlant
Constructor (ViewEditor), ToolServer, SourceServer, all the standard MPW
tools except compilers and asm, documentation on line (DocViewer),
PowerPC debugger, ResEdit with an street price of $299. [This will only be
shipped on introduction of the PowerPC. Bronze and Gold ship at Macworld. -
Ed.]
• Gold: All the contents of Bronze and Silver with the addition of 680x0-based
cross-compilers to the PowerPC for an street price of $399.
Purchasers of any Developer release offering will get a free upgrade to the
equivalent 1.0 release. You may also apply the cost of a developer release version to
obtain a more costly 1.0 release for the differential in average street price between
the two.
Greg Galanos said that academic packages (unbundling of compilers) will be
available as well; however, those policies have not been established as we go to press.
You will notice that the one thing that seems to be missing at this point is a
PowerPC-based compiler that generates 68K code. For that, at least for the time being,
we’ll get to use the 680x0 compilers in emulation.
While the compiler for the 68K family will generate code that runs under System
6 and/or on a 68000-based Mac, development requires at least a 68020 processor
and System 7.
Metrowerks contact information:
In the US
Metrowerks Inc.
The Trimex Building, Route 11
Mooers, NY, 12958 USA
Canada & International
Metrowerks Inc.
1500 du Collège
Suite 300
St-Laurent, QC, H4L 5G6 Canada.
Phone: (514) 747-5999
FAX: (514) 747-2822
AppleLink: metrowerks, AOL: metrowerks
Internet: metro@info.uqam.ca
[Metrowerks won’t be selling this product directly, but we have arranged it so
that you can order it through the MacTech Magazine Mail Order Store. - Ed.]
Referenced by (315):