Posted: 24-Nov-2001
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4 out of 5 Mice |
Vendor: Metrowerks | Type: COMMERCIAL |
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Reviewer: Bill Catambay | Class: PRODUCTIVITY |
CodeWarrior is a cross-platform development environment
for Macintosh, Windows, Linux, and more. This review is of CodeWarrior Pro 7 for
Macintosh. The review machines are a G3/333 and a G4/867, running in OS 9.2.1 and
OS X.
While Visual Basic has a growing user base on the Macintosh, and THINK Pascal still
has a faithful following of its own, CodeWarrior is the primary tool used by the
majority of software vendors building Mac applications. CodeWarrior includes compilers
for C/C++ and Java, a fine-tuned IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for editing,
compiling and linking, a built-in debugger, and a sophisticated class browser.
There are a lot of new features included with CW Pro 7, but the most important is
the ability to develop on and build for both Classic Mac OS (OS 9.x and below) as
well as Mac OS X. This means that you can build native OS X applications on either
Mac OS 9 or in OS X, and when you are on OS X, the IDE is running native. This feature
alone is worth the price of upgrading to CW Pro 7.
Writing code to run native in OS X, however, is by no means as simple as taking an
old project and building it with CW Pro 7. To run native, you must use the new Opaque
data structures that Apple has switched to, and this alone requires quite a bit of
reworking of your old code base. For example, where you once accessed a field of
the WindowRecord structure, you must now use a corresponding toolbox call to access
that data. In addition, there are old toolbox routines that are no longer supported
in OS X (aka, Carbon), and must therefore either be removed or replaced, depending
upon the routine. The in's and out's of porting to Carbon are an exercise for the
user, and although necessary to program native on Mac OS X, they are not a feature
of the CW IDE. For a complete guide on porting to Carbon, check out Apple's Carbon Porting Guide.
Features found in CodeWarrior Pro 7:
- C/C++ and Java compilers
- Mach-O support (builds native OS X applications)
- Mac OS X hosted command-line tools
- Mac OS X Project Converter
- Java 1.1.8 for Classic Mac OS and Java 2 for Mac OS X
- Visual Java Development (Property and Layout Editors, RAD, and more)
- Carbonized IDE v4.2.5 (runs native in OS X)
- PowerPlant C++ Framework
- Multi-functional Project Manager
- Profiler
- Powerful Search Engine
- Class Browser
- Integrated and Remote Debugging
- Multi-processor Debugging (Classic Mac OS only)
- Shared Library Debugging Support
- ANSI C Compliance (C89)
- ANSI/ISO C++ Standard Conformance
- Locale support for Unicode/UTF-8 file I/O
- Latest Altivec support (Velocity Engine)
- Carbonized Visual Source Safe Plug-in
- Open API for Integrating Third-Party Tools
- Online Documentation with Examples
- Sample Projects
- PowerPlant Tutorial
Compilers
The C++ language has been through some significant changes over the last several
years, culminating in an ISO/ANSI standard for the language. Some compiler manufacturers
were reluctant to implement several of the changes until the standard was approved.
Many compilers are still not completely compliant with the standard. The CodeWarrior
compiler aced the test.
Support for Java has greatly improved as well, including the Visual Java development
and Java 2 for OS X. My Java experience is limited, and I did not fully test the
Java compiler, but the sample projects all seem to work fine, and are an excellent
starting point for those wanting to learn Java.
Not mentioned in the documentation for CW Pro 7, nor on Metrowerks products page,
is the availability of Pascal and Object Pascal compilers for CW Pro 7. This little
gem can be downloaded from Metrowerks download page (in
the Pascal community, this package is nicknamed "Nirvana Pascal" because
it provides Mac Pascal programmers a tool to build native OS X applications in Pascal,
something they never thought they'd see). For Pascal support, however, do not go
to Metrowerks, as they have indicated that this is the last and final update of their
Pascal compiler for the Mac. All your Mac Pascal support needs can be met at Pascal Central and the associated MacPascal mailing
list.
Compiling in CodeWarrior is relatively fast. There have been improvements made to
the compilers over the years, and although not totally bug-free, I found the compilers
to be quite stable.
IDE
At its heart, CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment. This means that
the compiler, debugger, text editor, and source control utilities all interact together.
When the compiler detects a warning or error, the appropriate line (and word) is
highlighted in the editor, making compilation error correction much faster. When
debugging, source code lines are graphically selected to set/clear breakpoints. Variables
are highlighted to examine their values. An IDE increases productivity substantially
over command-line development environments.
From the File menu, you create a new project, and are presented a template dialog.
CodeWarrior provides templates for all the types of development listed in the template
window, and various options at the bottom of the dialog. For example, selecting MacOS
C++ / Standard Console / PPC / Std C++ Console PPC creates a project for a complete
C++ program sending output to a console window (stdout). It even includes a default
"Hello World" main program that can be edited or replaced as desired. These
ready-to-go templates make starting from scratch much easier.
Some noticeable improvements have been made to the IDE from previous versions. The
IDE itself feels more fluid and speedier, for editing, compiling and building applications.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the search utility had been separated into
two search types, single file and multiple file searching. In prior releases, there
was one search dialog, and to switch from searching in a single file (such as your
current source file) and searching in a list of files (such as the Universal Headers
or Universal Interfaces), you had to toggle a multi-file button. In CW Pro 7, Cmd-F
now presents a simplified search dialog that searches only in the current source
window, and Cmd-Option-F brings up a separate multi-file search dialog. Although
it took some getting used to at first (breaking old habits developed from the old
method), this is a better search tool. With the old method, more times than I can
count I would want a quick search in my source file, but I would forget that I had
the multi-file button down, and so the search went through a bunch of other files.
This annoyance has been completely eliminated.
I did not notice a whole lot of new features in the IDE, but then again, if it ain't
broke, don't fix it (Apple has a lot to learn from that old saying, as I still have
a difficult time navigating in the OS X Aqua interface). There is seamless integration
between the compilers, text editor, project manager and debugger. Compiling is as
simple as clicking a button. If there are errors, an error listing is displayed.
Click on an error message, and the code containing the error is displayed in the
lower box of the error window. Double-click on the error message, and the window
for the source file opens up highlighting the line containing the error. You can
edit the code in either place. For linking, the IDE still hasn't figured out a way
to integrate action to take for link errors. The messages are static, and the developer
must figure out what to do and where to go to fix it. Once your project builds (compiles
and links), you can run with the debugger and step through your code. I did notice
some improvements in this area, as switching back and forth between the debugger
and the code seemed to work easier.
There are a lot of features included in the IDE which the more experienced developer
can take advantage of, such as a surplus of preference settings, project settings,
target settings, class browsers, and more. All in all, IDE 4.2.5 is a well built
and finely tuned instrument for building Mac applications.
Debugger
The debugger is an important part of the IDE, warranting its own review. To Metrowerk's
credit, the CW debugger has come a long ways from its previous versions. The seamless
integration into the IDE is fantastic, and it provides wonderful ease-of-use for
stepping through your code. Many of the things you would expect from a debugger,
such as setting breakpoints (which you can actually do in the standard editor now
when debugging is enabled), examining variables and memory, are all included, and
relatively simple to access. However, there are still quite a few things that bother
me about the debugger.
When stepping through code, the list of variables provided to view in the debugger
window now only include those variables accessed in the current scope. For example,
if in a function, even with "all variables" selected, you will not see
the global variables that are not accessed within the function. You can, however,
open the Globals Variables window to see them. Similarly, in viewing a constant,
I wanted to just click on the constant name to see the value of the constant, but
didn't find that the case. I was able to right-click the constant to have the debugger
take me to the constant declaration, but I would have preferred to have stayed where
I was and just have the debugger tell me the value. I also ran into problems with
Opaque data types. Granted, these types are no longer pointing to record structures,
but they are still pointers, and it would be helpful to have them displayed as pointers
for determining NULL conditions. Unfortunately, I found the debugger to be quite
inconsistent with these variables, sometimes displaying them as pointers (pointers
are displayed with a triangle to the left of the variable name and followed by the
address they are pointing to), but most of the time just displaying them as junk.
I would have to do a "view as..." to get the appropriate address displayed.
The issues that bothered me most about the debugger, however, were inconsistencies
in the behavior of displaying data values, and its inability to step through errors
without crashing or dropping into meaningless assembly code. I would often view
variables, especially pointers, and have different results displayed without having
executed any further steps of the program. This made it difficult to trust the values
returned by the debugger. Likewise, more times than not, if I had memory leaks in
my program, or simply tried to do things that the OS did not like, the debugger was
not sophisticated enough to catch these errors before either dropping into assembly
or crashing. Some of these issues are probably due to the structure of the Mac OS,
but I think the debugger could be greatly improved in this area.
One other problem which I noticed is that the "stop" button seems to be
broken. In prior versions of the debugger, I was able to click on the stop button
(the button with the red square), and execution would stop and display the code.
Now I click the button and nothing happens. The only way I found to get back into
the code was to open up the source code file, and set a breakpoint where I knew the
code would pass through during it's current cycling.
While the debugger functions are intuitive and appear to function as designed, you
don't always get accurate or consistent results, and underneath the hood there is
still a lot to be desired.
PowerPlant
PowerPlant is an extensible application framework that Metrowerks has been perfecting
for many years. It provides C++ wrappers around most of the Mac OS Toolbox features
that application developers need to use. It includes a WYSIWYG GUI builder (Constructor)
that allows you to create the basic layout of your application by dragging components
from a pallette to the appropriate place in your application windows. This tool allows
complete customization of each GUI component and builds the appropriate resources
automatically.
As with most GUI builders, PowerPlant does not remove the need to understand the
fundamentals of the Macintosh programming model. It does, however, shield you from
most of the mundane details, allowing you to concentrate on the portions of your
program that make it stand apart from all the rest. Likewise, PowerPlant is not
an all or nothing framework. You are free to use as much or a little of it as you
wish. In practice, the PowerPlant framework and classes are a bit too busy for me,
especially given my desire to always do things my own way and veer off the beaten
path. For those who don't want to tinker too much in the Mac toolbox, however, PowerPlant
provides an excellent "head start" on programming Mac applications.
Documentation
CodeWarrior Pro 7 comes on two CDs: one CD for Developer Tools, containing all the
relevant parts of the IDE, such as the compilers, library files, templates, etc.,
and the other CD for Reference materials. The Reference CD is chock full of useful
documents, such as the IDE user manual, specific user manuals and reference manuals
for the compilers, a PowerPlant manual, tutorials, loads of sample code, and much
more. In addition to the material that comes on the CD, Metrowerks provides excellent
support through it's web site, by means of the Developer Resources
page (White
Papers, Newsgroups, and
general Support), as well as CodeWarriorU.com,
a great set of online programming courses available for free.
Summary
Metrowerks was the first to provide developer tools for the transition from 68K to
PowerPC, and now they lead again by providing the developer tools for going native
in OS X. CodeWarrior is, by far, the most popular development environment for the
Macintosh platform. The IDE has come along ways, and provides the developer a very
sophisticated environment for application development. CodeWarrior provides the organizational
tools to make building Mac applications a seamless process, allowing the programmer
to focus less on how to get the application put together and more on the coding of
software. Despite some of the short comings that still exist in the debugger, I
was very impressed with the Pro 7 IDE. With OS X support, as well as an improved
search utility, I highly recommend CW Pro 7 for any developer for the Mac platform,
experts and hobbyists alike.
Pros:
- Builds native OS X apps, and runs native in OS X itself
- Fully integrated compile/edit/debug environment
- Stable compilers for C/C++ and Java (and although not "officially" supported, also available are Pascal and Object Pascal compilers for download)
- Visual Java development
- Improved file search utility
- Lots of documentation, including tutorials and online "how to" classes at CodeWarriorU.com
Cons:
- Lack of integration with 3rd party text editors
- No longer comes with Pascal (though Pascal can be downloaded)
- Stability and consistency problems with the debugger
- Some primitive debugger functionality
Overall Rating:
4 out of 5 Mice