CodeWarrior making war

[jes]

Hi,

I'd have to say that at this point I'm EXTREMELY disappointed in the quality of the 32-bit CodeWarrior environment for the ColdFire processor.  It's apparently riddled with bugs that numerous exchanges with Technical Support via a Service Request haven't been able to answer.  Besides the debugger no longer being able to break (icon is perpetually greyed out after clicking the RUN icon), single step in a coherent manner, arrive at a breakpoint and display the code, it has now undergone another transformation.  I thought perhaps that the erratic stepping might have something to do with optimization of source code so I innocently turned the optimization settings down to the minimal level.  CW responded that it would have to recompile the code.  Ok, fair enough.  But when it recompiled the code it created a duplicate file of EVERY SINGLE .c FILE!  This is true of my Source files and the Support files.  I tried to undo it by returning to the former optimization settings but alas the duplicates remain.

I'm even more disappointed in the quality of the technical support.  The fact that CodeWarrior engineers don't seem to peruse this forum to provide timely and ACCURATE responses to either technical questions on a particular processor or the CW problems is even more upsetting than the 2-7 day turnaround time offered by submitting a service request.  Then, about all they can offer is a suggestion to "reinstall the software" or "I've never seen it do that before" or "it shouldn't be doing that." 

I guess it's all part of the mentality of just get something out there NOW and we'll worry about testing it thoroughly later. 

[CompilerGuru]

What exactly was dublicated?
Do you mean in the "Files" tab in the project window?

If this is correct, then the behaviour you see may be caused when some of your build targets dont have the propertly set access paths.
Basically the Files tab only merges the files of the various build targets together if it is sure it is the same file. If a file cannot be found in one of the build targets, CW does not know (or silently assume) that this is really the same file, and not a file with the same filename in another directory.
If this is your problem, you can fix it as follows.
Open the "Project Inspector" (the last button in the project window toolbar), or in the View menu.
Select the dublicated files and check the information the Project inspector shows. It does state through which access paths it was found, or if it was not found, and to which build targets a file belongs.

If this is not what was dublicated, then please let us know what was actually dublicated.

Daniel

[jes]

My 2nd attempt at a response. 

A 2nd copy of each .c source file (but not .s files) was placed into my project Files tab for each previously existing .c file appearing under the Support files and Source folders.  This was precipitated by having reconfigured the compilation to minimal optimizations and then recompiling, accepting the CW warning that all files would be recompiled.  At conclusion of the recompile the duplicate files appeared in the Files tab.

About a week prior to that I had created a separate directory named CODE_0001 on the same level as source in my project.  This directory contained a copy of all files related to the project and was created when I had a reliably working image of my application.  Numerous compiles and flashing of target were done after creation of that directory with the unaltered optimization setting and I had no problems. 

I was able to rectify the file by somewhat brute force by Remove(ing) files from the project and then reinserting them and relocating the CODE_0001 directory, lest it should happen again.  I included a screen shot as part of my Technical Service Request for which I received the following reply:

 

In reply to your Service Request SR 1-294968874 (see details below):

please, Can you send me your project source code?, which CW coldfire version are you using?, special, standard or ProED? Have you any kind of dual processor on your PC?, Your copy problem sound as License issue but I need check with your code.

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I'm typically not in the habit of zipping up my source code and shipping it off to places unknown especially since this problem appears unrelated to source code but rather to the CW IDE.  I used the source code and directory structure that originally came with the  5213 eval board so perhaps they could start there.  Plus the suggestion to use a different license.dat has been offered so many times that it's become almost cliche'.  Of course, the new license has never alleviated any of the problems.  Is he actually serious about the dual processor or is this a joke? 2 processor - 2 file, 3 processor - 3 file, many processor - many file.  Tomorrow it's his turn to be the computer.

[CompilerGuru]

How many build targets do you have (or did you have)? More than one?
As I said, when different build targets do find different files (or do not find files), then the expected behaviour is to list the files once for each real source file.
As you said you did have the same files multilpe times in different directories, then (with multiple build targets), this would completely explain it.

One thing to notice about CW is that by default (without checking "Save project entries using Relative Paths" in the "Target Settings tab") CW always take the first file with the given name in any search path.
So by just changing the paths, it compiles another file.

Well, the license suggestion does make at least some sence as there is a 32 files limit in some licenses.
But if you hit this limit CW tell you so. If it did not tell you this, then you did not hit it....

Oh, and before I forget it. Search paths can be recursive (the two folder symbols in the second column in the Access Path preference). With recursive search paths.

Did you check how the 2 files are located with the Project Inspector?
Another thing you can look at is when you export the project to xml. Then you basically see what CW stores for your project. To do this, select the project and do File->Export Project.

Are the files also multiple times in the link tab?

Daniel

[jes]

Ouch!  I had a response to your reply which I diligently worked on, hit the Submit button and was met with an "Authentication..." error.  It apparently 'disappeared' my response.

Does freescale have a facility to report errors in the bug reporting facility or is it still being worked on by the Elbonians?