Codewarrior Analysis Tools 2.0

by Metrowerks

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00002S6SO
• Item model number: 47021
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,886 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #36 in Software > Programming > Development Utilities > Code Testing
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

CodeWarrior Analysis Tools helps Windows software developers maximize the execution speed of programs by providing a view of what will happen at execution time. This product incorporates two independent applications: Metrowerks Hierarchical Profiler for identifying slow spots in programs, and Metroworks Code Coverage for visualizing the completeness of test routines. Both run under Microsoft Windows and operate on 32-bit Windows applications, written in C/C++ with CodeWarrior Professional for Windows, Microsoft Visual C++ 4.x or later, or Microsoft Developer Studio 4.x or later. Metrowerks bought these products from TracePoint (they were called HiProf and Visual Coverage by that company), so this software may look familiar to you from its earlier incarnations. The Metrowerks Hierarchical Profiler provides a visual guide to the execution speed of your programs' functions, both in absolute (time) and relative (percentage) terms. To analyze a program with Hierarchical Profiler, you must compile a project in one of the supported development environments, leaving debugging symbols on. Then, you direct the attention of Hierarchical Profiler to the executable and any .DLLs files of interest and allow it to create and save an instrumented version of the code. The Hierarchical Profiler's work includes calls that allow it to monitor what's going on during execution (you can exclude portions of your program from instrumentation if you'd like). When you then run and test the instrumented program, Hierarchical Profiler keeps track of which functions call other functions, and the time spent executing code in each. Upon quitting, you can look at the time data organized as a hierarchy, displayed as either a list with pie charts or a graphical tree that shows function calls. In this hierarchy, you'll be shown parent functions listed with their execution times, as well as those of their children. Hierarchical Profiler automatically generates a list of your program's slowest functions and displays a very handy Critical Chain window, which shows the slowest path through the program. It's easy to identify the functions that tie up the processor longest, so you know where in your code to try to improve your design. The Metrowerks Code Coverage application helps you make sure that the test routines you use to validate your software are doing their job adequately (monitoring which lines run during tests). To test a program, Code Coverage builds an instrumented version of it, similar to the one Hierarchical Profiler creates. You then run the instrumented version and exercise it (manually or with a test driver), in an effort to make the program run through all the code that applies to the conditions you're testing. Based on the information it gathers from its instrumentation code during the test runs (you can do several, with different arguments if you like), Code Coverage tells which parts of the software were exercised during the testing, as well as which portions were left untested and which are dead. You can choose from among several views, including a very cool one that color-codes your program's source to show specifically which lines are executed during testing, how many times, and in response to what conditions. You can export reports to the printer, or write them to HTML or text files. Together, the two applications in CodeWarrior Analysis Tools will help you deliver software of higher quality. While no tool can actually improve the quality of the code you write, the two in this suite go a long way toward showing you where to look for performance gains. --David Wall

Amazon.com Product Description

Metrowerks' CodeWarrior Analysis Tools are powerful, flexible, yet easy-to-use tools that spot bottlenecks and untested bytes in your code and precision-tune the performance of your applications. Based on TracePoint's HiProf and Visual Coverage technology, CodeWarrior Analysis Tools use a patented Binary Code Instrumentation (BCI) technique that enables you to identify program design inefficiencies and untested code quickly, accurately, and thoroughly. The CodeWarrior Analysis Tools are specifically designed for Win32 C/C++ applications, and support applications developed using CodeWarrior for Windows Professional Edition and Microsoft Visual C++. If you want to develop high performance, high-reliability applications in a shorter period of time, you need CodeWarrior Analysis Tools.

The Metrowerks Hierarchical Profiler provides you with a complete, accurate, and precise picture of each phase's execution time. This information lets you pinpoint and eliminate bottlenecks and hotspots in your code rapidly and accurately, so you can build faster, highly optimized applications. Deliver more reliable products with the Metrowerks Code Coverage tool. This tool gives you the most thorough code coverage analysis available. Its exceptional detail allows you to identify tested, untested, and dead code in your application quickly, improving your test suite and your application's reliability.

CodeWarrior Analysis Tools' BCI framework displays compiled and linked executables. Since there is no need to recompile or preprocess your application before code analysis, you can profile or run code coverage much faster than ever before. In addition, the easy-to-grasp analysis results help you identify areas for improvement. All of these features translate into a shorter time to market.