CodeWarrior v11.0 questions

[scottm]

I just got the release announcement for CW 11 and it's left me scratching my head.  It's presented as a major new release that's not covered by my annual subscription but according to the release notes it appears to be a minor service pack with support for a handful of new devices.  It also says it adds support for the Cyclone Pro and Cyclone ACP, but I've been using the Cyclone Pro for several years and the Cyclone ACP for at least two years.

There's no mention of fixes for the bugs that drive me nuts on a daily basis - breakpoints that move when you insert lines above them, globals that keep multiplying when you add them to the watch list until they bog the system down and have to be constantly deleted and re-added, and custom build steps that just don't work and throw a null pointer exception.

I'm not sure about the breakpoints, but I'm fairly certain the other two were fixed in Eclipse years ago.

Is that really all there is to this update?  Is it safe to assume that CodeWarrior is now so far behind on Eclipse updates that the resources will never be there to bring it up to date?  It seems like a slap in the face to all of the paying CodeWarrior customers to present this as a major release and demand upgrade fees when there aren't any apparent new features.

Scott

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Scott,

According to release note,

CodeWarrior for Microcontrollers-Eclipse IDE|NXP             

CodeWarrior® for MCUs v11.0 is a full product release with a number of major enhancements. There are significant changes throughout the product, so updating a previous release to v11.0 is not practical. An existing Standard or Professional license prior v11.0 needs to be upgraded to be used for the v11.0 version.

If you use annual subscription license and it is in one year support, you can upgrade your license to CW11.0 without any charge.

If the license is out of one year support, user needs to renew support (  not free ) to upgrade the license.

Have a great day,
Jennie Zhang

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[scottm]

I guess we have different definitions of 'major enhancements', then.  Is it safe to say that CodeWarrior will never get any more fixes for Eclipse?  I seemed to be doomed to paying annual fees for a dead-end system for as long as I need to keep supporting the thousands of HC08, HCS08, and Coldfire-based devices we've shipped over the last 14 years.

Scott

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Scott,

HC08, HCS08, and Coldfire-based devices are NXP legacy products. There are rarely new chips adding to those derivatives.

I think this is one of a key reason that we can't add new HC08, HCS08, and Coldfire-based devices to CW. It's hard to say long term feature, but now, it's hardly to add new devices to CW.

For newer Kinetis chips, our recommended tool is MCUXpresso.

BR,

Jennie Zhang

[scottm]

I don't care about support for new devices, but I've got projects I'll have to maintain for years on CodeWarrior.  It would be nice if the money I pay every year actually helped improve the usability of the software.

And for the record, the breakpoint bug is still there in the latest version of MCUXpresso.

Scott

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Scott,

Regarding to the breakpoint bug, did you report it?

If yes, do you have a defect number? I can check it.

[scottm]

I basically gave up reporting any bugs in CodeWarrior a long time ago.  It's usually something that was fixed in Eclipse 4 years ago but it sounds like CW is stuck on Juno forever.

It looks like the bug is only cosmetic in MCUX.  In CW, to reproduce the bug:

Set a breakpoint at, for example, line 100.  Paste in a line of code at line 90.  The breakpoint indicator stays with its line and moves to 101.  If you run the program, it stops at line 100.

After pasting in line 90, move down to line 101 and attempt to remove the breakpoint.  You can't.  This part is still broken in MCUX.  You have to remove the invisible breakpoint at line 100 and THEN the breakpoint indicator at line 101 disappears.

Scott

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Scott,

I understand the breakpoints problem that you meant.

I will escalate it to development team.

Thank you for bringing the problem to our attention..

Have a great day,
Jennie Zhang

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