Following the licensing of CodeWarrior core technology to Nokia, for the CodeWarrior for Symbian OS suite of tools, you might have been forgiven for thinking Freescale Semiconductor's Metrowerks organization was scaling back its support for Symbian OS. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the latest CodeTEST announcement shows.

"We are very much committed to Symbian OS," says Roger Edgar, Wireless Marketing Manager with Metrowerks "In fact the arrangement we have with Nokia has, if anything, strengthened our commitment to supporting Symbian OS in the CodeTEST product line."

CodeTEST is an integrated suit of four software analysis tools: CodeTEST Performance, CodeTEST Trace, CodeTEST Memory and CodeTEST Coverage. Each tool has hardware and emulator versions allowing analysis to be performed before hardware is available. The hardware versions also work over either a direct hardware link or using agent software on a device.

"The CodeTEST suit extends the functionality developers need to create applications," explains Todd Greenwalt, Engineering Manager for Metrowerks. "For any constrained device the need for software analysis tools is becoming, if it is not already, self evident."

Support for Symbian OS v9 bring these tools right up to date. It is not the only way in which support for Symbian OS has improved. "CodeTEST was first adopted by handset manufacturers, but we are now seeing more interest from third-party developers," says Todd. "So we have looked for ways to make the product more accessible to this audience. One way is by providing precompiled binaries and installers for CodeTEST device agents, for the devices third-party developers are likely to want to work with. So it's easier for them to start using the CodeTEST products."

Metrowerks have also made a number of bundles available, such as a emulator only version of CodeTEST Trace, to meet the growing ISV and third-party developer interest.

All four CodeTEST modules have an important role to play in the creation of quality software. Todd has however noticed specific trends in the interest shown by various companies working with Symbian OS. Device manufacturers are most interested in the Performance and Coverage modules. "They use Coverage to help with code quality and Performance for optimization," explains Todd. Third-party developers seem to have more interest in the Trace, for debugging, and Memory modules. "Symbian OS specific memory analysis can be quite tricky," says Todd. "The Symbian OS memory APIs are unique and we have developed Symbian OS specific utilities to help developers understand and improve their memory management." The modules of interest to third-party developers is changing however, with an increasing interest being shown in the Coverage module. "As the Symbian OS market matures developers are being put under increasing pressure to create higher quality software," says Todd. "Which is driving an increased third-party developer interest in the Coverage module."

Another important feature of CodeTEST is that it provides tools for working with an extensive range of RTOS. In addition to Symbian OS CodeTEST supports Linux along with a host of less well known RTOS used in embedded devices, such as VxWorks and QNX. "One of the beauties of CodeTEST is that the core technologies, which makes up most of the products value, are common across a range of RTOS," says Todd. "Only a thin layer sitting on top of that is needed to address a specific RTOS. So it is relatively straight forward to move from one RTOS to another, with a small incremental cost."

Read the official press release here.

For more information on CodeTEST see our earlier article Tools for Code Quality Improvement - Metrowerks CodeTEST or visit Metrowerks Web site: www.metrowerks.com