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Targeting PocketPCs With Mono?
Posted by
timothy
on Wed May 14, 2008 04:36 PM
from the kissing-disease dept.
from the kissing-disease dept.
That's What She Said writes "I am a long time Mac user and, as most people like me, I have some particular problems with Microsoft technologies. I need to develop applications for the PocketPC platform (Windows CE and Windows Mobile), some simple data collection applications for barcode-enabled portable data terminals. Every device manufacturer on the market offer SDK's for .NET, so I believe this is the way to go. I already tried Microsoft Visual Studio and I am having serious problems using the IDE. I simply don't understand it quite well. My programming experience comes from PHP and JavaScript, where all I needed was a simple text editor and to keep my work as tidy as I could. So, it seems that a full-fledged IDE is kind of scary to me or Visual Studio is not very good for beginners. I also want to keep my costs low and free alternatives are welcome." Read on for a bit more (below) on why TWSS is thinking about Mono as a development environment, and is seeking advice.
That's What She Said continues: "Through some research, I've found that my options are quite narrow. Rapid development environments are available, but cost way too much or have some terrible limitations. Also, I have not found many forums on PocketPC development that really have useful information. Google isn't helping. Some directions would be good.
I have been looking at Mono for some time and MonoDevelop seems a hell of a lot simpler to use. I even started playing with it. It runs fine on my Mac.
I tried Google again to find some information on writing .NET Compact Framework applications with MonoDevelop, but I didn't find anything. It seems Mono implements the Compact Framework, but there's not much more information about this. Except for one blog post from 2006, I didn't find anything else.
So, I ask: is it possible? Is anyone doing this with any success? Is there any problem I should know beforehand?"
I have been looking at Mono for some time and MonoDevelop seems a hell of a lot simpler to use. I even started playing with it. It runs fine on my Mac.
I tried Google again to find some information on writing .NET Compact Framework applications with MonoDevelop, but I didn't find anything. It seems Mono implements the Compact Framework, but there's not much more information about this. Except for one blog post from 2006, I didn't find anything else.
So, I ask: is it possible? Is anyone doing this with any success? Is there any problem I should know beforehand?"
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Knuckles writes "Austrian newspaper Der Standard continues its recent series of in-depth interviews with free software developers. This time they sat down with Novell's Vice President of Developer Platform, Miguel de Icaza of Gnome and Mono fame. The interview was conducted at GUADEC (GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference).
Miguel talks mainly about Mono 2.0 and .Net 3.5 compatibility, enhancing the collaboration with Microsoft over Silverlight ('Moonlight' in Mono), and the larger political situation of Mono and Moonlight. When the interviewer asks whether Moonlight is only validating Silverlight on the web, Miguel gives a quite detailed answer that includes a possibly well-deserved swipe at Mozilla ..."
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Unhelpful... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Unhelpful... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Qt (Score:3, Interesting)
Qt has ports for windows, windows ce, mac, and linux.
if you develop nicely enough you can make the app in a mixed dev environment and just do final testing and deployment onto windows ce. who knows since the qt port is cocoa and iphone uses cocoa you could end up with a single app for all platforms.
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If you care about your user interface, you should get the application up and running on a real device ASAP and always use it as your guide. Emulators are very handy for when you're doing a rapid compile-run-code cycle during the early stage of developing a particular feature, and debugging.
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Just Bite the Bullet (Score:3, Informative)
You can also find tutorials to help get you started here: http://netcf2.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
The only issue using Sharpdevelop is that I don't believe that you can use the Microsoft PocketPC emulator which means you have to keep compiling, uploading, and remote debugging your code.
Visual Studio includes the emulator and would be a good tool for you to learn. The jump from using notepad to a full IDE programming suite can be intimidating at first but it will really help your career as a programmer.
Oh, that's just mean (Score:2, Funny)
No (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a Windows CE developer, and I doubt this would work very well, even if it is possible. Part of the point of using Visual Studio is testing your software and your deployment on the emulator beforehand so that you don't end up bricking an actual device and having to do a hard reset. Mind you, if you aren't comfortable using an IDE, I'm guessing testing and deployment aren't high on your list of priorities...
There are some alternatives:
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If you can fix it with a hard reset it's not a brick.
Debugger (Score:2, Informative)
Mono can only be spread between PocketPCs by... (Score:3, Funny)
If you want sloooow apps, use Compact Framework .. (Score:2, Interesting)
(a) C# on handhelds is really, really slow. We're talking a perceptible lag when switching between screens; I had to rewrite the automatically generated code to speed up form loading.
(b) Visual Studio (2003/2005 both) is even slower. It always seemed to take at least 2 seconds to respond to clicks, and as for startup time, I was fooled several times into thinking that my
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I've found C# on the devices to be no problem at all. Another post mentioned that they too used the barcode scanner and tha
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friendly advice (Score:2)
So let me give you a few pointers:
1. Visual Studio is your (only) friend most of the time, so live with it.
2. Use the barcode scanning C APIs and p/invoke them, or write in C. Most of the barcode vendors
Confusion (Score:2)
Mono is more of a framework. Sure it's got an IDE associated with it, but it's primarily an open source version of
You could potentially write something for Mono and port it over to
Use Tcl ? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Head First C# best intro to Visual Studio book (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514822/ [oreilly.com]
Best C#/Visual Studio book from what's in my opinion the best series of teaching books around right now.
Here's the link to free download of Visual C# Express.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/ [microsoft.com]
That's not a trial. It's a free reduced feature version of Visual Studio 2008.
Should be doable (Score:4, Informative)
I used a port of the DotGNU project as an on-board compiler [sourceforge.net], and I think that I used Mono on Linux. (It may have been DotGNU, I don't recall.)
I believe that I ripped the DLLs comprising the compact framework off the device, and then used that to compile when on Linux. I think that there was a switch to turn off linking against the system DLLs, and I just linked against the DLLs from the device. Once the exe was built, I was able to run it on Linux using mono (since they had implemented WinForms, I could just run it straight), or I would simply copy the exe to the device via an SD card and then I could run it from there.
I never finished developing the app, so I never got around to figuring out how to package a CAB, but that should be trivial. I know that there are Linux apps to create CAB files, so it should just be a question of finding one buildable on the Mac and figuring out what to put into the manifest.
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