I thought I’d bring this out of comments and post a full entry for it.
Ben Combee wrote:
CW for Palm OS V9 is being restocked by Metrowerks, but there are no plans to update the toolset. IMO, the V9 release works well for producing Palm OS Garnet applications. There are a few updates I’d make if I was still there, but nothing major. On the topic of non-Garnet OSes, PalmSource has done a good job preparing an Eclipse-based environment for Palm OS Cobalt and I assume they will do something similar for Palm OS for Linux. The limitations of prc-tools for 68K programming don’t apply to the ARM tools for Cobalt.
I’m not really disagreeing with this. CodeWarrior for Palm 9 is an excellent tool for Palm OS Garnet, and if you are writing C/C++ applications for Garnet using PRC you need your head examined. Likewise, the free tools for Cobalt seem to be very high quality, and there’s no reason to assume that Palm OS Linux tools will be any worse. PalmSource is producing great software; my problem with PalmSource is that for various reasons nobody is running their software.
My problem with the current situation is based on these points:
- Palm’s public position is that they are not producing Cobalt devices any time soon.
Palm has a stake in developers continuing to be able to produce Garnet applications. Now, granted, Palm may be working on Cobalt devices. I’m just not counting on it as a developer. CodeWarrior doesn’t need to last a month or two, but potentially years. - Metrowerks lacks the resources to do even minor fixes to CodeWarrior for Palm, and lacks motivation to acquire them.
Metrowerks has already made roughly as many sales on CodeWarrior for Palm as they ever will. Short of a major release and upgrade fees, there’s no more money to be had out of it. - There are no other tools available that come anywhere near providing what CodeWarrior currently provides.
In short, if CodeWarrior broke tomorrow, I would not be able to build my applications.
Aside from the broken command line compilers (which is pretty important going forward, since it would have allowed uers to escape the IDE when it ultimately breaks), CodeWarrior for Palm is in pretty good shape. But what if SP3 for Windows XP (assuming such a thing ever exists) broke CodeWarrior for Palm? Who would fix it? And what effect would it have on Palm?
Currently, Palm and third party developers both have their eggs in one basket. A basket that they have little to no influence over.
As an aside, was the C++ article useful to anyone? I’m considering writing more articles on specific issues, such as unicode on the Palm.
August 4th, 2005 at 5:07 am
C++ articles are very useful, keep it up … good commentary on the Palm.* debacles too. You should make sure your articles are well syndicated, to be sure they’re found by other people who would find them useful.