Clie Development

[michal]

Hello everyone,
I am brand new at any sort of development with clie, but I am very interested to learn. Could anyone give me some advice as to how I would get started doing this and what software I might need. Basically a "how to" for beginners, so that I would be able to run a simple program on my clie.
I have a lot of development experience with java and c++, just not sure how to start with this.

Thanks

[clieZilla2]

if i were you and you wanted to stick with what you know i'd look into www.falch.net's developers studio (that's what i'm using).... easy to get up and running with simple apps written in c or c++. really, really nice.

if you REALLY want to make it easy on yourself look into a tool called NSBasic - will let you get up and running apps in like minutes, using VB style code...

but maybe before all this i'd but the PalmOS Programming Bible (second edition covers os5) by Lonnon Foster. Man this is a good book and covers all three major c/c++ development tools out there today - Codewarrior, and DevStudio (which i mentioned above) included!!! great read for new PalmOS developer...

[Eric S]

First thing to do is to go to www.palmsource.com and download the SDK. You should probably register to become a developer while you're there, then apply to the seeding area (I'll get to why in a paragraph or two). The SDK is about 3000 pages of documentation, most of it in explained but non-tutorial form. It's enough for some people, but most people pick up a PalmOS programming book to back it up. If the SDK isn't enough, I'd recommend the PalmOS Programming Bible (second edition).

Next, you need to decide on a development environment. C and (limited) C++ are the primary languages for programming the Palm, so I'll go over those first.

CodeWarrior is the standard C/C++ programming environment, complete with an IDE and associated tools. It is rather expensive, especially if you don't qualify for a student discount.

Then there's the PRC-Tools, which is built on the GNU toolchain. These are free, but you get no IDE. Also note that static libraries compiled by one will not work with the other, and both use completely different methods to compile, set up resources, etc. It's what I use, but I'm used to the GNU toolchain, so it came easier to me.

Then there are at least two IDE wrappers around PRC-Tools. DeveloperStudio is the more complete one, and the more costly as well. I can't remembe the name of the other one, but it has a folowing to, so shouldn't be dismissed.

Before I go any further, I will say that in my opinion, you should use something that generates a68k instructions and uses the PalmOS system calls, rather than one of the rapid application development environments. The reason for the first is speed. Interpreted programs run slower and eat batteries faster than equivelent compiled programs in most cases. The second is because when the OS changes, RAD tools that bypass the OS tend to break, and then you're in the position of waiting for the RAD tool developer to update their runtime. They also tend to break on any system that isn't what the developers of the RAD tool were expecting. I've got a HandEra 330 that works for some of these, bombs out others, and leaves the rest acting quirky. You can generally forget about taking advantage of special features of any specific PDA with the RAD tools as well.

You might want to take a look at SuperWaba if you're experienced with Java. It's a JVM for PalmOS, though I don't think its kjava (?) compliant. It falls under the RAD issue mentioned above, as a version of SuperWaba that is OS5 compatible was finally released just a few days ago.

[ayasin]

Originally posted by Eric S
I can't remembe the name of the other one, but it has a folowing to, so shouldn't be dismissed.


The other is called mobileStudio. It doesn't seem to be maintained anymore, the traffic in their newsgroup is near dead. I recommend the Falch.net over it (I own mobileStudio and did several projects with it). mS has some key issues that are not only annoying but haven't been fixed for over a year and it also does not support OS 5.

Amir

[Eric S]

Originally posted by ayasin


The other is called mobileStudio. It doesn't seem to be maintained anymore, the traffic in their newsgroup is near dead. I recommend the Falch.net over it (I own mobileStudio and did several projects with it). mS has some key issues that are not only annoying but haven't been fixed for over a year and it also does not support OS 5.

Amir

True, I had meant to mention that (including the current status) but forgot.

I also forgot to mention that there was an IDE on SourceForge that hasn't been touched in a year and a half or so.

Oh, and one other project is a real C compiler that runs on the Palm, though I wouldn't do real development work there.