Comments on: PalmSource Announces New ARM Developer Toolkit

PalmSource today introduced its Fast ARM Solutions Toolkit (FAST). FAST provides developers with an easier and faster path toward creating ARM native applications for Palm OS 5 that will be compatible with future versions of the operating system.

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Fast ARM Solutions Toolkit (FAST)?

I.M Anonymous @ 5/6/2003 2:54:10 PM #

If there is one thing I hate, it is recursive acronyms!

RE: Fast ARM Solutions Toolkit (FAST)?

Fammy @ 5/6/2003 4:38:13 PM #

I GNU that. Har har!

_____
Fammy

RE: Fast ARM Solutions Toolkit (FAST)?

xtremist5150 @ 5/7/2003 2:45:45 PM #

"C" what I mean? Too much "Java" in your veins! Now let's just imagine a 'Visual BASIC' of what this all really means, no need to jump out any "Windows" over this!

Free Codewarrior 9.2?

tl47 @ 5/6/2003 6:05:22 PM #

Wait... FAST is a free download? And it includes a new Codewarrior 9.2? Is that true or am I misreading? That sounds fantastic to me :).

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

pocketscience @ 5/6/2003 7:07:17 PM #

I'd be amazed if Metrowerks started giving away CW... I think you'll find it's a set of free plug-ins etc for CW (which you'll still have to buy).

Ben, care to clarify...?

Cheers,

Wassup? http://www.pocketscience.com.au/

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

TechnoCat @ 5/6/2003 9:38:44 PM #

And that's one of two reasons PPC is easier on developers than Palm.

1. MS gives you a WinCE-specific version of VisualStudio, which is a great package, free. The only way to do dev on Palm free is via CygWin/PRC-Tools, doable but difficult, command-line driven, and unsupported by Palm. If you want a decent environment, shell out $150... which is a lot of money to most folks.

2. MS provides nice common wrappers and APIs (though they're buggy.) Palm makes you write the event loops, adapt standard C to Palm C (e.g. use MemCopy() instead of memcpy()), and more.

In most ways I prefer Palm, but they really don't grasp developer support.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

bcombee @ 5/6/2003 10:08:42 PM #

The FAST tools will be a free download from PalmSource. To use them, you will need version 9.2 of CodeWarrior for Palm OS. 9.2 is a free update for V9 users, but you still have to purchase the CodeWarrior for Palm OS V9 tools. 9.2 will be out at the end of this month, while the FAST tools should be in beta around that time.

--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

asiayeah @ 5/7/2003 8:14:27 AM #

Will CodeWarrior support Mac OS X or Linux?

Tony

--
With great power comes great responsiblity.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

Adalipu @ 5/7/2003 9:13:18 AM #

> 1. MS gives you a WinCE-specific version of
> VisualStudio, which is a great package, free. The only
> way to do dev on Palm free is via CygWin/PRC-Tools,
> doable but difficult, command-line driven, and
> unsupported by Palm. If you want a decent environment,
> shell out $150... which is a lot of money to most
> folks.

PRC-Tools and PilRC _are_ really great tools, their platform independence and the fact that they base on open standards and thereby work with powerful tools like ddd or the like make them far superior than M$s propietary crap.

Besides, how long does it take you to install CodeWarrior or Visual Studio? For the GCC-based environment, I enter "apt-get install prc-tools pilrc", wait 30 seconds and it is up and running. Try this at home.

I was asked by my employer whether I would want any of CodeWarrior or Sattelite Forms, but I'm so happy with the GNU tools that I turned this offer down without second thought.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

PalmSide @ 5/7/2003 9:19:25 AM #

> Palm makes you write the event loops, adapt
> standard C to Palm C (e.g. use MemCopy() instead
> of memcpy()), and more.

Hey, it's MemMove, not MemCopy. However, i like to have control over the Event Loop and all that.

Will there be any (unsupported of course) FAST for GCC?

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

helf @ 5/7/2003 9:35:34 AM #

Dude. Theres other programs for palm programming..

Like onboardC...

*************
RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?
TechnoCat @ 5/6/2003 9:38:44 PM

And that's one of two reasons PPC is easier on developers than Palm.

1. MS gives you a WinCE-specific version of VisualStudio, which is a great package, free. The only way to do dev on Palm free is via CygWin/PRC-Tools, doable but difficult, command-line driven, and unsupported by Palm. If you want a decent environment, shell out $150... which is a lot of money to most folks.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

RhinoSteve @ 5/7/2003 10:25:51 AM #

>1. MS gives you a WinCE-specific version of VisualStudio,
>which is a great package, free. The only way to do dev on
>Palm free is via CygWin/PRC-Tools, doable but difficult,
>command-line driven, and unsupported by Palm. If you want
>a decent environment, shell out $150... which is a lot of
>money to most folks.

And what kind of losers you hang our with that can't drop $150 for a developer tool? That is nothing compaired to the Palm device you are coding upon. And then there is the cost of your PC.

Well for me "most folks" can easily afford this since we have real jobs, real careers and are out of la la land and doing something useful to this world.

The Cold War isn't over, they just went to academia trying to sponge off someone else since Big Brother is dead.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

margerum @ 5/7/2003 10:46:19 AM #

Ahhh quit your whining. If you want a half assed free development tool then by all means use eVB which is basically vbScript or the lousy MFC based eVC. Personally, I find the palm OS API to be quite elegant and efficient. Plop the POL framework on top and you have a much more productive environment than m$ embedded tools. $150 for a Metrowerks code warrior upgrade is quite reasonable considering what they provide.

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

bcombee @ 5/7/2003 11:52:35 AM #

No, there are no plans to port the CodeWarrior for Palm OS V9 series toolset to Mac OS X or Linux. Metrowerks has tools for both of these platforms for targeting native applications, but the cross-platform Palm OS tools are not part of those products, and there would be significant amounts of work to get the Palm OS tools integrated into those environments. We do not currently feel that we would have sufficient sales to pay for the cost of porting to these platforms.

--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

RE: Codewarrior x Embedded Visual Tools

dq @ 5/8/2003 5:49:05 PM #

> 1. MS gives you a WinCE-specific version of
> VisualStudio, which is a great package, free

eVC is a very good product, except when you want to debug your software. I would trust eVB only for quick prototyping. Some would call giving eVC for free "dumping"...

CodeWarrior evolved a lot, but still has a few quircks in the user interface and lacks a higher level framework.

Daniel

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

bcombee @ 5/9/2003 2:34:12 AM #

Actually, it has a higher level framework. Version 9 ships with the excellent Object Library for Palm OS, a comprehensive C++ framework library that handles many of the details of interfacing with Palm OS.

--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

timepilot84 @ 5/13/2003 12:15:16 AM #

When PPC first came out the development environment was NOT free, not at all. It was an $800 add-on to Visual Studio. That's right, you had to buy Visual Studio, then drop another $800 for the Wince dev kit. The only reason it's free now, is because nobody was writing programs for Wince.

It amuses me no end that even though some claim that developing software for the Palm is so difficult compared to PPC, the volume of available software for the system has always been several magnitudes greater than the Wince devices. Hmm. Maybe it's not that big of a deal to developers?

RE: Free Codewarrior 9.2?

TechnoCat @ 5/15/2003 8:19:13 PM #

Yeah, y'all have your opinions, but here's the thing... I am a developer. From your comments its obvious most of you aren't. I develop on Linux, BSD, Windows, PPC, and some on Palm. And yes, I use gcc, PilRC, etc. to write PalmOS apps. But you guys are deluding yourselves severely if you believe that (1) most programmers will bother or can handle a cygwin or linux command line, or (2) alternatively they'll pop out $150 for the cheapest, or $500 for the mainstream, development environment for playing with the Palm.

It may, rarely, happen, but the Palm learning curve is simply, due to that, much steeper currently than the PPC one.

And just because it didn't impact me (other than that I'd like to see a decent debugger), doesn't mean it's not a problem. Unlike those of you with particularly pompous proclamations about what programmers should do, I know a lot of programmers and am a real one, and I'm telling you, those of us who aren't intimidated by gcc/cygwin are definitely the minority. The group willing to spend several hundred dollars to write a test app are even more a minority.

Another poster pointed out MS used to charge a LOT for the PPC dev kit. THAT, and far greater distribution, are why Palm has more apps and games. But the WinCE SDK has been free for a while now, PPC programs are catching up very quickly (and there are more print magazines to them too), and now it's time for Palm to realize they have to release CW or another decent IDE free also. Or their dev base will stay static while PPCs continues to explode.