Metrowerks
Encyclopedia
CodeWarrior
CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment for the creation of software that runs on a number of embedded systems. Prior to the acquisition of the product by Freescale Semiconductor, versions existed for Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube,...
, comprised an IDE
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
, compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s, linkers, debuggers, libraries
Library (computer science)
In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....
, and related tools. Freescale, its current parent company, continues to sell these tools.
History
Founded by Greg Galanos in 1985 as Metropolis Computer Networks in HudsonHudson, Quebec
Hudson, Quebec, Canada, is a town with a population of 5,088 on the south-west bank of the lower Ottawa River, in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges Regional County Municipality. Situated about west of downtown Montreal, many residents commute to work on the Island of Montreal.- Location and...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Metrowerks originally developed software development tools for the Apple Macintosh and UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
workstations. Its first product was a Modula-2
Modula-2
Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith...
compiler originally developed by Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth...
, the creator of the ALGOL
ALGOL
ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
, Pascal
Pascal (programming language)
Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
and Modula-2 programming languages. It had limited success with this product. In 1992, it began an effort to develop development tools for Macintosh computers based on the newly-announced PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
processor as well as legacy support for 68k chipsets. It shipped the first commercial release of CodeWarrior in May 1994 at Apple's
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
Worldwide Developers Conference
Worldwide Developers Conference
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers, as well as offering hands-on labs and feedback sessions...
. The release was a great success. Metrowerks received much credit for helping Apple succeed in its risky transition to a new processor.
In March 1994 Metrowerks had its initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
, trading under the symbol MTWKF (NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
foreign exchange) and continued to trade on Canadian exchanges.
Also in 1994, Metrowerks opened a small sales and R&D
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
office in Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to be closer to the manufacturers of the new PowerPC chips, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
. Metrowerks would later move its corporate headquarters to Austin along with Greg Galanos (Founder/President/CTO) and Jean Belanger (Chairman/CEO).
By 1996 Metrowerks had begun expanding its CodeWarrior product line to target platforms besides Macintosh computers, including:
- Mac OS PowerPC
- Mac OS 68k68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...
- General MagicGeneral MagicGeneral Magic was a company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat that developed a new kind of handheld communications device they called a "personal intelligent communicator", which was a PDA precursor that stressed communications....
's MagicCap OS - BeOSBeOSBeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
- Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
x86 - NECNEC, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
v8xx, VRxxxx - General MIPSMIPS architectureMIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
(ISA I-IV) - General PowerPC embedded
- General 68k embedded
- General Coldfire embedded
- General ARMARM architectureARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
embedded - PlayStationPlayStationThe is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
1 + 2 and Playstation PortablePlayStation PortableThe is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004... - Nintendo 64Nintendo 64The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
and GameCube - Sega SaturnSega SaturnThe is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...
- JavaJava (programming language)Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
tools - NokiaNokiaNokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
SymbianOS (toolchainToolchainIn software, a toolchain is the set of programming tools that are used to create a product...
sold to Nokia in late 2004)
In August 1999, Motorola's semiconductor sector (SPS) acquired Metrowerks for roughly $100 million in cash. After the acquisition, Jean Belanger moved to become VP of business development in SPS and after a short stint as Director of Software Strategy for SPS, Greg Galanos left to become a General Partner and Managing Director at SOFTBANK Venture Capital, known as Mobius Venture Capital since December 2001. David Perkins, previously SVP of Business Development at Metrowerks assumed the title of President and CEO.
Metrowerks subsequently acquired a small number of other companies including HiWare AG, Embedix and AMC. In 2002, David Perkins assumed the role of Corporate Vice President of NCSG at Motorola SPS; Jim Welch (previously the CFO of Metrowerks) assumed the role of CEO. In late 2003, Jim Welch left to become CEO of Wireless Valley Communications
Wireless Valley
The term "Wireless Valley" has several competing uses.It seems to have been coined around 1990 by Ted Rappaport while he was a professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, alluding to his research program in wireless communications and the location of Blacksburg between the Appalachians and...
and Matt Harris (who was previously CEO of Lineo
Lineo
Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients, on 20 July 1999.Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of Caldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998...
and Embedix) became the new CEO of Metrowerks. In early 2005 Matt Harris left Metrowerks to become CEO of Volantis
Volantis
Volantis is a mobile internet software company based in Guildford, England, but with offices in cities worldwide including Seattle in the United States, Krakow in Poland, Pune in India, and in the special administrative region of Hong Kong...
at which time Freescale management decided to absorb Metrowerks completely and not treat it as a wholly owned subsidiary.
In 2003, Motorola spun off its semiconductor group as a separate company named Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. is a producer and designer of embedded hardware, with 17 billion semiconductor chips in use around the world. The company focuses on the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets with its product portfolio including microprocessors, microcontrollers,...
. In July 2005, they discontinued CodeWarrior for Mac OS. In October 2005, Freescale retired the Metrowerks name but continues to develop CodeWarrior and other developer technologies as part of Freescale's Developer Technology Organization.
Metrowerks' logo of the iconic factory worker and other visual branding was created by illustrator Bill Russell.
Addendum: Freescale's website now says, "CodeWarrior for Mac OS has been discontinued and is no longer sold or supported." It has several downloadable updates, but the most recent modification date is 15 August 2005.