New Adventures in Warrioring Code
The most recent releases of CodeWarrior for the PS2 console, 3.6 and 3.6 SP1, have .NET integration (actually, you can install it for versions as far back as 3.04). It?s a pretty handy tool for our overworked programmers I suspect. The installation is fairly easy and can be executed either by standalone or via a recent version?s full install. Most installations of CW are repeat installs. What I mean by that is it?s very rare for me to come across a virgin machine, thus I have to use the standard tricks of getting the latest version on their machine or in some cases, multiple versions coexisting happily together. The .NET Integration is nowhere near as problematic as days past, but I did run into a bump or two along the way.
When installing this feature, an error might pop up to prevent the install continuing along its way. The error basically says, ?Ya know what Princess? I can?t find an environment variable for any CW version from 3.04 or higher despite the fact that you just installed it. Show me to your Command Line Tools, damnit! You?ll have to reinstall. Have a nice day. Mwahahahaha!?
Reinstall? You wish! You can?t make me reinstall, ya lil shit! Basically what happens is when you use the trick of an alternate install directory for newer versions, which I highly recommend, the installation of both versions, whether they are still on the machine or not, will show up in the CWFolder_PS2 path by default. Fortunately the solution is quite simple. Edit the environment variable to point to the latest CW install. You don?t want to point it directly to the Command Line Tools, it doesn?t seem to care for that much direction. Just give it a soft nudge to the root install directory and you?ll be integrating with the best of them. Whether or not you can get the .NET integration to work with multiple versions on one machine remains to be determined as of this date. I have a sneaking suspicion the day will come that I will look a programmer in the eyes and say the following, ?You have one version working, don?t push your luck, buddy boy.?
Comments
I hate CodeWarrior. SN is far superior. But that ain't saying much.
Posted by: Paul | February 7, 2004 10:19 PM
From what I understand, that's the problem...there aren't that many other products out there to use aside from CW.
From my side of things, CW has greatly improved. I'm not quite sure if it has for programmers. That's usually when I leave the room :)
Posted by: Princess | February 8, 2004 10:32 AM
That's funny Paul, I hate SN, particularly on XP where the debugger and Target Manager crash frequently. Not to mention, the .NET integration wasn't working for us last time we tried it out, it may be better now. Having not used CW though, I can't say which is better.
Posted by: crowdpleazr | February 8, 2004 12:31 PM
CW the editor is a major pain in the behind. Severely retarded.
CW the compiler is, well, dangerous. It sometimes goes ahead and does really stupid things. In my 15 years or so, I have found two compiler bugs. One in Borland C 3.01, the other one in Watcom 10.6, Both known for their shoddiness. In CW, it's one at least every three month.
CW the debugger, on the other hand, rocks. I wish MS would be able to duplicate some of that functionality. It really makes debugging easy. (That maybe explains the compiler bugs - they're having so much fun hunting them down using their own debugger, they don't mind)
Still haven't tried SN.
Posted by: groby | February 8, 2004 1:06 PM
I've never had any stability problems with SN. They're tech support is lightning fast. Although that sometimes means they'll email you a "fixed" binary that no one else can't download. I started out hating the SN Debugger (used to VC) and I have grown to adore it. It's highly customizable.
Codewarrior is in a slick and polished package. But everything feels hidden and out of control to me. I've seen some really poor assembler come out of CW as well. SN is a little more "scattered" but no more than it's GCC siblings. But SN is giving up on GCC and writing their own compiler.
The funny thing is that Codewarrior was the first IDE I ever worked in. Unless you count MPW.
Posted by: Paul | February 9, 2004 11:08 AM