PalmSource Releases Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0

PalmSource today at the Euro Dev Con announced the release of Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0, designed to enable the development of next generation multimedia and wireless applications for ARM- and 68K-based Palm Powered devices.

Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0, available free of charge to all PalmSource registered developers, will be distributed to all attendees at the PalmSource Euro DevCon, where developers can benefit from in-depth technical sessions on the new toolchain. Registered Palm OS developers can also download Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 free of charge from the Developer Zone on PalmSource.com.

The new Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 includes an open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on Eclipse, originally developed by IBM. Eclipse is a commercial-quality, best-in-class IDE with several hundred plug-in tools that support major software languages including C, C++, Java, and COBOL. The introduction of Palm OS Developer Suite enables developers to create mobile applications that run natively on ARM-based smartphones and mobile devices running Palm OS Cobalt.

"Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 integrates all the various tools for project building, editing, compiling and debugging, making it easier to develop ARM-native applications for Palm OS," said Tim Norman, co-founder of NormSoft, a leading Palm OS developer and creator of Pocket Tunes. "PalmSource has done a superb job documenting the changes since Palm OS 5 and have developed a great introduction to using the Palm OS Developer Suite and associated tools."

Developers have traditionally used Metrowerks CodeWarrior or command line tools to develop applications for Palm OS Garnet or previous versions of Palm OS. PalmSource has since developed and incorporated the Palm Application Compatibility Environment (PACE) into Palm OS Cobalt, designed to allow most existing 68K applications to be forward compatible and "just work" on Palm Powered devices running Palm OS Cobalt. 

Although 68K applications have the advantage of running on a wide variety of Palm Powered devices, only Palm OS Protein applications-ARM-native applications written using the new Palm OS Protein APIs-can take advantage of the many new features introduced in Palm OS Cobalt. Palm OS Developer Suite is currently the only free toolchain available for the development of ARM-native, Palm OS Protein applications.

"Palm OS Developer Suite represents PalmSource's commitment to the 300,000-plus registered developers to provide best-in-class tools to create next-generation wireless applications for ARM-based Palm Powered smartphones and wireless mobile devices," said Larry Berkin, director of developer marketing at PalmSource. "We believe that the suite simplifies the development process and allows for the creation of native applications that leverage the more than 100 new APIs in the new Palm OS Cobalt SDK."

Key features of Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 include:

• Support for development of Palm OS Protein applications (x86 and ARM), 68K applications, and PACE Native Objects
• Based on the open-source Eclipse IDE, version 2.1.2 and Eclipse C/C++ Developer Tools, version 1.2.1
• Managed Make support eliminates need to manually edit makefiles
• Integrated debugging support for Palm OS Simulators, Palm OS Emulator, and most devices with serial or USB connectivity
• Standalone Palm OS Resource Editor with support for XRD resource format
• Integrated build environment and command-line build tools bundled SDKs and simulators for Palm OS Garnet (5.4 and earlier) and Palm OS Cobalt (6.0.1)