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View Full Version : CodeWarrior vs Xcode




daveL
Mar 11, 2004, 12:54 PM
Has anyone benchmarked the CodeWarrior v9 C compiler against Apple's version of gcc 3.3 included in Xcode 1.1? CodeWarrior is pretty pricey, so I'm curious how the code quality (performance) compares between the two. I'm more interested in G4 code than G5. I know about the IBM XLC compiler, but it's targeted more to the G5. Actually, if anyone has been able to play with XLC, I'd be interested in any data you might have.

Thanks in advance!



cubist
Mar 11, 2004, 01:33 PM
I'd like to know that too. I have both of them, but I haven't gotten around to compiling any benchmarks.

You should know that Metrowerks, producers of CodeWarrior, are owned by Motorola. They seem to be rather quiet lately.

bousozoku
Mar 11, 2004, 01:57 PM
The code quality and more important, the standards compliance of the MetroWerks compilers is high. The IDE and PowerPlant frameworks are pretty much thrown in for free and act like it. The IDE isn't so bad now, but PowerPlant and Constructor are still in the early 1980s.

gcc 3.3 is not nearly as good.

My experience with IBM's C compilers would suggest that they are still terrible at handling syntactic errors but excel in code generation. Once you have something right, put it through an IBM compiler for amazing code. :)

daveL
Mar 11, 2004, 01:58 PM
You should know that Metrowerks, producers of CodeWarrior, are owned by Motorola. They seem to be rather quiet lately.
Actually, they just updated CW to version 9.2 a couple of days ago. I wasn't aware Moto owned them, although that *should* bode well for G4 code quality.