Eclipse-based, Mixed-Language IDE Released

DDC-I has announced OpenArbor, a tool that the company claims is the first Eclipse-based mixed-language development and run-time environment to integrate C, Embedded C++, Ada, and real-time Java. Moreover, Open Arbor claimes to make it possible to develop hard real-time applications that combine Java, C, EC++, and Ada.

OpenArbor is a mixed-language, object-oriented IDE for developing and deploying real-time, safety-critical applications. The core environment combines optimizing compilers and libraries for C and EmbeddedC++ with the SCORE multi-language debugger. The SCORE debugger features an intuitive multi-window GUI, project management support, and automated build/make utilities. SCORE's symbolic debugger recognizes C/EC++, Ada, and Fortran syntax and expressions, and can view objects, expressions, call chains, execution traces, interspersed machine code, machine registers, and program stacks.

OpenArbor provides separate Eclipse plug-ins for Ada and Java development. These plug-ins can also be used with IDEs such as Wind River Workbench and LynuxWorks Luminosity.

The Ada plug-in, known as SCORER-Ada, features an optimizing Ada compiler and run-time environment optimized for safety-critical embedded Ada projects. The SCORE-Ada debugger supports full Ada-level debugging, including constraints, attributes, tasking, exceptions, break-on-exception and break-on-tasking events. The debugger is non intrusive, can debug at the source or machine level, and can be enabled without changing the generated code.

OpenArbor's real-time Java plug-in, known as Scorpion, provides deterministic garbage collection, a prerequisite for executing bounded, hard real-time applications. Scorpion features a Java compiler, a builder for ahead-of-time Java file compilation, and a virtual machine (ScorpionVM) for executing real-time Java applications. Scorpion also features a smart linker that reduces code size (up to 80 percent) by removing unused objects from closed systems, and a profiler that helps optimize speed/size tradeoffs by determining the best mix of compiled and interpreted code.

Scorpion is also available with an Eclipse plug-in that automatically maps Java native method calls directly to existing Ada/C code. This tool enables Java programs to call existing C and Ada programs, thereby supposedly simplifying mixed language development and the migration of legacy C/Ada code.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:45 PM  Permalink