Freescale Semiconductor announced it is porting its Linux-compatible CodeWarrior development tools to the Eclipse open architecture platform. Freescale is also joining the Eclipse Foundation and will work with Power.org and Wind River on the Eclipse Target Communication Framework project, says the company.

(Click for larger view of a CodeWarrior for ColdFire screen)

Freescale moved to Eclipse in part because most of its third-party vendors, such as MontaVista, Wind River, QNX, and LynuxWorks, support the Java-based platform, says the company. By being compatible with Eclipse, CodeWarrior users will have hundreds of free and commercial Eclipse plug-ins from which to choose. In addition, CodeWarrior plug-ins will become available on other Eclipse-based platforms, says the company, providing more consistency between development platforms.

CodeWarrior Development Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for embedded processors that provides source-level debugging and embedded application development tools using a visual, automated framework, says Freescale. Components include:

• CodeWarrior C/C++ Compiler Suite
• Runtime libraries
• Assembler
• Standard Template Library (STL)

CodeWarrior is now sold in different suites, with the professional suite supporting the full list of devices, and the standard and basic suites supporting progressively fewer devices. Special suites are available for a la carte support for specific devices. The full list of supported devices includes:

• HC(S)08/RS08 microcontrollers
• HCS12(X) microcontrollers
• ColdFire architectures (V1)
• ColdFire architectures (V2, V3, V4)
• 56800/E digital signal controllers
• Power Architecture — MPC55xx
• Power Architecture — MobilGT
• Power Architecture — Netcomm
• Power Architecture — MPC5xx
• 68K embedded systems
• StarCore DSP

Prior to joining Eclipse, Freescale had already been collaborating with Power.org and Wind River on the Target Communication Framework (TCF), one of many projects underway as part of the Eclipse Device Software Developer Platform (DSDP) initiative. TCF is a lightweight extensible communications protocol for communication between devices and development tools, including debugging, monitoring, analysis, and test tools.

The TCF project aims to create the “Eclipse 'Explorer of the Network Neighborhood,'” offering “pluggable information providers under a single, consistent UI,” says the group. The idea is to enable developers to use the lightweight protocol to interactively discover, drill down, and analyze remote systems. The protocol is designed to work with a variety of debugging, monitoring, analysis, and test tools, including target agents, JTAG probes, and target simulators. The intent is to streamline testing and development of heterogeneous, multiple-vendor device configurations such as are commonly found with multicore and system-on-a chip (SoC) processors.

Stated Tomas Evensen, CTO at Wind River, “It's a great move for Freescale and a win for Wind River as our collaboration effectively advances embedded initiatives within the Eclipse community.”

Stated Joerg Bertholdt, senior director of Product Management and Marketing at MontaVista Software, “Our combined customers will now have the ability to leverage Freescale silicon-optimized plug-ins and MontaVista DevRocket plug-ins to simplify the complex tasks of embedded Linux development.”

Availability

Freescale did not provide a timetable for its Eclipse-compliant version of CodeWarrior except to say that “products are under development and will come online in a phased approach.” The product was announced at its Freescale Technology Forum this week where Freescale also announced a successor to the PowerQUICC communications processor family called QorIQ, as well as a Linux-compatible product development kit (PDK) for its i.MX31 applications processor.

 
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