Richard: Switching companies can be very disruptive of products and projects. How did the switch from Metrowerks to Nokia go for CodeWarrior and the team?

Markus: From my perspective things are going very smoothly. Clearly making this type of complex move can be very disruptive. We had to move our product support, development staff, address human resources issues like payroll, change office locations and release a new product all in the same timeframe. In the end I think we had only two days of downtime when we physically moved offices. We were back at work within 3 days of the move, surprisingly quick since there were so many inter-related and inter-dependent tasks. Originally the release of our next product had been scheduled for mid December, and in the end we released early, on 3 December. I think we were all surprised how quickly and efficiently it all happened.

SymbianOne: With version 3.0 what advances have you made?

Markus: The biggest and most important improvement has been the introduction of support for Symbian OS v9, which as you know has a whole new architecture. For our tools group, this involved adding support for the ARM ABI environment and this was a big change. It required supporting a new compiler, a new debugger interface and a whole raft of other changes. It was even more challenging from a tools perspective because the ARM ABI is itself a new and evolving standard. On top of which Symbian needed the tool to create the new OS release and there was only one compiler but we knew we would need to support more in the future. So we ended up creating an XML-driven build environment so that we can simply drop in any ARM ABI-compliant compiler in the future. So all new CodeWarrior for Symbian OS products will support ARM Ltd.'s RVCT as well as the GCC-E compiler, due for release later this year, and other compilers as they become available.

These changes have dominated our roadmap over the last several months; it's been about keeping up with the changes in Symbian OS. Supporting the evolution of Symbian OS, with its necessary binary break is a big task. Symbian has articulated clearly why this change needed to happen now, at this point in their evolution, and as you can imagine, one doesn't undertake a binary break unless there is an important reason to do so. And these changes represent challenges to all companies that support and develop for Symbian OS, include our tools team. There is a lot of work to keep pace with the evolution.

Richard: Is the ARM ABI support the only change in 3.0 then?

Markus: Certainly not. There has been a range of other improvements. For example we have now integrated the ROM building process directly into the CodeWarrior target. So now an OEM can do a build and immediately initiate a ROM build. So we have improved productivity by bringing another command line task into the IDE. In addition we have also added optimizations that improve the time it takes to download the ROM build onto the target hardware. This is an important for OEMs where they may be doing two or more of these each day.

We have also extended our JTAG emulator support, so in addition to Lauterbach, TI, and ARM standards CodeWarrior now also support Midas and Sophia. These emulators are particularly popular with Japanese OEMs, a critical market for Symbian OS and, by extension, for our product line also.

I have one more feature to highlight before we move on. There is a new Resource Manager to allow the developer to manage bitmaps, localization text and a number of other resource items. It helps reduces the complexity associated with working with Symbian's resources.

There have been many changes in CodeWarrior for Symbian OS v3.0 in addition to the support for Symbian OS v9 and we have a roadmap for many additional improvements over the next few months.

Richard: With the move to Nokia and the announcement by Symbian of an Eclipse IDE for C++ developers has the market positioning for CodeWarrior changed?

Markus: Not at all. In fact, the Nokia tools team supports Symbian's announcement and we're working with Symbian to define the features of the next generation of CodeWarrior tools. The market segments we will support are still the same. We still have the same target groups in mind as we did before we joined Nokia. I believe we are in a better position to serve the developer now than we were before. We see CodeWarrior addressing two distinct classes of companies and three different developer roles. One class of company is the OEM and its suppliers, and here we see CodeWarrior OEM serving the developers working with device creation while Professional Edition is the choice of those creating software components for those devices. The second class is ISVs, where Professional Edition fulfills the needs of demanding application developers, and the Personal Edition provides a great development tool for programmers looking to inexpensively target the growing market of Series 60 and UIQ mobile phones, with interesting applications.

Richard: One of the fears many felt when the announcement was made was about what would happen to UIQ support in CodeWarrior. Is the tool becoming more Nokia and Series 60 orientated? Will it lose the UIQ community?

Markus: Quite to the contrary. Nokia made a commitment to Symbian, to UIQ and to Sony Ericsson before the transaction that the CodeWarrior for Symbian OS tools would continue to be developed to the benefit of the entire Symbian community. We have maintained that stance and, in conjunction with Symbian and UIQ, we'll continue to deliver the best tools for Symbian OS. We have been focusing on the activities we committed to prior to the acquisition by Nokia, delivering Symbian OS v9 support and updates to hardware support. We have a full roadmap for 2005 and 2006, with the first updates scheduled for later this year. The changes are based on feedback, from OEMs and Sony Ericsson is both a customer of our tools and a contributor to our roadmap. In addition to gathering requirements from Nokia, we look to the Series 60 licensees, Sony Ericsson and UIQ Technologies AB, and the vibrant OEMs in Japan who are building for both the Japanese domestic market as well as for export to GSM markets. We have regular meetings with all of them and their requirements are prioritized to go into updates and new products. Nokia, and the Nokia tools team, remain very much committed to the whole Symbian ecosystem.

Richard: But surely there must be more of a Nokia focus to the tool now?

Markus: Not really. There are some very obvious benefits as a result of our joining Nokia. We now have better access to the roadmaps for Symbian OS and also for Series 60 than when we were within Metrowerks. But remember that Series 60 supports some of Nokia's strongest competitors, so our focus isn't about giving Nokia a competitive advantage in the Symbian ecosystem to the detriment of other licensees. It's about making Symbian OS a success, in every vendors handsets, and for every application developer. Early access to roadmaps is key to providing the best support to the market. Our relationship Symbian, with UIQ and others exists today and is perhaps deeper than it was when we were part of Metrowerks.

Richard: So what is going to happen to CodeWarrior next?

Markus: We have a couple of near-term updates planned. CodeWarrior 3.0.1 OEM Edition will provide early support for Texas Instruments' OMAP 2420 reference board. Later, with the 3.0.2 release we will provide general support for ARM v6 architecture cores, support for the ARM ABI-compliant GCC compiler, as well as support for ARM's next release of RVCT. This will also be the version used to launch the 3.0 Personal Edition of CodeWarrior to coincide with the release of SDKs for the next generation of Series 60 and UIQ.

One very happy benefit of our move into Nokia is that Nokia Series 60 terminals based on Series 60 v3 will provide the powerful CodeWarrior on-device debug capabilities that Sony Ericsson's developers have already enjoyed for some time. We both know that this is a critical feature that developers ask for. While we can't comment on Symbian's licensees' plans, with Series 60 v3, on-device debugging is now a viable option for every handset vendor using Symbian OS.

Further down the road, we are planning some major updates to the tool. Currently we are working on an extensible Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool for easy UI development. We see this as a major step in the value proposition for Personal Edition developers, as it will significantly ease the route to learning how to develop for Symbian OS.

Richard: Now that you are in Nokia, what are the long-term goals for CodeWarrior for Symbian OS?

Markus: Fundamentally the same as before, though with much more corporate focus and funding. CodeWarrior should be the tool of choice for native developers working with Symbian OS, whether creating new devices or new applications. It should lead the market with the best support for the entire Symbian OS development process. We want to lead the market in supporting new versions of Symbian OS, in delivering productivity to developers, and in responding to the need of developers with new innovation. We'll earn this right by listening to our customer's needs and delivering successive releases to our products that address those needs quickly. Our team has always been committed and focused on Symbian OS. Now that we're part of Nokia, I'm happy to report things are better than ever before. Keep watching this space.

For more information on CodeWarrior for Symbian OS visit the product pages at www.forum.nokia.com/codewarrior.