Development solutions turn to Linux

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 30, 2004

New commercial-grade Linux development solutions streamline a full range of tasks including board bring-up, kernel-level debugging, driver development and application creation.

Metrowerks has developed commercial-grade Linux development solutions that streamline a full range of tasks including board bring-up, kernel-level debugging, driver development and application creation - all within a Linux hosted environment.

The CodeWarrior development studios complement Metrowerks' existing lineup of hardware, board support package (BSP) and code coverage tools to offer one of the industry's most comprehensive and cohesive collections of Linux development solutions.

The following embedded Linux development suites are expected to be available from Metrowerks in the weeks ahead: CodeWarrior Development Studio for PowerPC ISA, Platform Edition; CodeWarrior Development Studio for ARM ISA, Platform Edition; and CodeWarrior Development Studio for ColdFire ISA, Platform Edition.

The suites include a debugger that delivers the capabilities required to target a Linux OS to a new hardware platform, including driver development.

The debugger allows the developers to view breakpoints and perform low-level trace analysis, and it includes a non-gdb kernel-level stop-mode debugger, as well as a run-mode application debugger.

These capabilities are all part of the suite's CodeWarrior integrated development environment (IDE), which enables seamless board bring-up, Flash programming and diagnostic capabilities during Linux kernel bring-up and kernel-level debug processes.

The CodeWarrior suites allow use of a JTAG connection to the embedded target using PowerTap Pro or an Abatron in-circuit emulator, depending on the architecture.

This capability allows embedded Linux OS developers to interactively control and examine the state of the target system during the debugging process.

Users can quickly access and manipulate files by name or kernel function name via the symbolic window, allowing breakpoints to be set immediately through the CodeWarrior interface, without interrupting the debug process.

The suites allow users to begin kernel-level debugging with the PowerTap tool and then move to application-level debugging via the Metrowerks AppTRK debug agent, which offers the capability to debug application processes.

The suites also offer: the CodeWarrior IDE, which provides a source-level debugger, project manager, text editor, search engine, source browser and build system; integration with virtually any Linux technology vendor's host-compatible build environment and 2.4.x kernels; automatic target initialisation of all board hardware and the Linux kernel independent of the boot loader prior to the debug phase, and compatible with both standard and custom boot loaders; support for more than 150 flash devices including automatic flash programming and verification tools; advanced management and display features to view Linux target processes including those at the kernel level, and individual process parameters such as status, command line executable, environment variables and memory maps; simplified coding features including stationary, automatic coding capabilities, user definable display formats, full shared library support and one-step build, deploy and debug processes; a project manager for multiple project creation, import and export options; an ELF file importer that allows new projects to be created from pre-compiled binary files; and a post linker processor that minimises target RAM requirements by keeping debug symbols on the host system.

CodeWarrior Development Studio for PowerPC, ARM and ColdFire architectures are expected to be available from Metrowerks in May.