Good Development tool for windows ce - windows-ce

I'm just finding my feet on Windows CE development and have quite a few questions.
We're trying to develop apps on Windows CE (mobile computer with a barcode scanner) and I'm looking for development tools. I've an ASP.Net/WinForms background and I did build another app using C#/VS2008 and am looking to see if there is like a tool that can be used to expedite development.
The app we're trying to do is of medium complexity and an ideal tool would be one that I could use in conjunction with lets says some C# forms that I can code myself.
I've looked at a few tools and most of them are tailored for simple apps, besides they do not give me the flexibility to add code and the options are fairly limited.
Is there a tool like the one I'm looking for, or a good tool that I can use for CE.
Thank you.

The de facto standard development environment for Windows CE apps is Visual Studio 2008 Professional. It provides tools and compilers for both native (C/C++) as well as managed (C# and VB.NET) applications.

Related

UI on windows CE 5.0

I am a windows phone developer. I recently started working on windows CE. I noticed all I have for the UI is a toolbox with a few controls and drag and drop. As a mobile developer I am used to a design language XAML and a backend logic language c#. My question how do i design an application on windows CE. does it has any language (like XAML for windows Phone). and why can't I find a code editor for the UI in visual studio 2008 developing for windows CE
I see many people use Qt. You can easily create UIs like the one on smartphones or even complex 3D ones. Also Qt is cross platform, so if you decide to change the OS you should be able to take your UI with you.
XAML is possible, but is also works with C++ and not with C#.
You will use Blend for creating the UI.
Here some info to get you started:
http://developer.toradex.com/knowledge-base/how-to-create-a-silverlight-application
Some other UI frameworks for WinCE:
http://developer.toradex.com/knowledge-base/gui

Application Development for Windows CE

I have a POS software and need to develop a collecting module for windows CE to run on a Honeywell Dolphin 6100 device.
I need to develop a simple application to run on a Honeywell 6100 device. This application should:
Get a list of products (code, description and price) from my POS software
Process Sales reading product's barcode showing Total due and number of items
Upload that sale to my POS software (via network, files, or something like that)
What are my options? Are there any Application builder for Windows CE? If not what could I use to develop such application?
You have a few options, but few (if any) of them will allow you to create the application without writing code. I'm aware of no "application builder" products that will get you there in Windows CE, and I've been working with CE for some time. That's not to say some obscure thing might not exist, but I am not aware of one.
You can write your application in .NET - either C# or VB.NET are supported - using the .NET Compact Framework (CF). For that you will need Visual Studio 2008 Professional and really little else, other than a device. There are lots of tutorials and online resources for CF development, so I won't put in a list of them here.
You can write your application in C/C++. For this, again you'd want to use Visual Studio 2008 Professional. Yes, there are options that use other compilers, but if you want to spend time actually writing the app and not building up a development tool chain and figuring out how to get it connected and debugging, then Visual Studio is the route you want.
If you'd like a non-Microsoft solution, there are others that are supported to more or less of a degree. NS Basic has been around a long time, so it's probably pretty robust and has reasonable support. I've never used it, but I've heard good things about it from those who have.
Anything else and you're a bit off the reservation. Support will likely be minimal at best, tooling will likely not be robust, support, tutorials and all of the other goodness that developers often rely on to move forward will be scant. You can likely get any language working under CE, given enough time and resources, but the options above are the most likely to lead to success.
Since you said you know Delphi and didn't want to learn another language, you can use Delphi Prism to write a client app to run on windows CE, pull the data you need, and post it to a webservice:
Is Delphi Prism a new version of Delphi .net?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygene_(programming_language)
(edit) Just checked and it's now a part of this package:
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/faq

Is there a cross platform desktop framework that would utilize native libraries such at .NET and Cocoa?

I am starting a project that is heavily graphics related (think, paint app with layers).
Anyway, I have a long history in C#, Java, JavaScript and Ruby. This application will be open source.
But what I'm looking for is a "build once, use everywhere" framework. Most of the platforms I've looked into either seem to be far too outdated, too complicated, or just not a right fit.
I've looked into Swing, WindowBuilder, wxRuby, etc. So many choices and none seem modern enough, have good documentation, etc.
I was a C# desktop developer for years so if I were targeting Windows only, I would go that route easily. But I want my app to run on Macs too. But, I would like the Mac version to look like it was designed for a Mac and the Windows version designed for Windows, etc. I'm looking at the Mono Project currently. But the idea of my Mac users installing Mono doesn't appeal to me.
Anything Ruby based would be cool but not required.
Anyway, what are some recommendations? I use NetBeans, Eclipse and Visual Studio. So I'm not concerned with learning new IDE's if I had to. I even thought about doing it all in JavaScript and using the canvas but since I need to work with large, local binary files, I didn't know if that would be a good option.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Real Studio can create cross-platform desktop apps for OS X, Windows and Linux. It can also create Cocoa apps and you can use it to interface with Cocoa directly when needed.
However, Real Studio creates Win32 apps, not .NET apps so you cannot directly interface with .NET libraries.

Develop Windows applications with Linux tools

I like the Linux operating system and vim editor, but there are many companies that develop under Windows environment in Visual studio etc. There is a possibility that I will have to work for such a company in about a month.
I'd like to do my work on my Linux system and copy the files to them. I have experience with both developments and I found out that I don't want to work with MS products but I like programming and writing MS code is not such a pain.
Are you a similar developer? Could you give me some advice about your methodology to be most of the time on Linux platform, to create code and debug everything in vim on Linux and only when neccessary open Visual Studio with Windows forms and similar things and test the things that weren't possible to test in Linux environment?
I would see the work in creating small peaces of code on Linux, testing them and then move it to MS platform and integrate to the whole system. How do you debug and test your code? The development will be probably in C# or C++. I can't imagine Visual Basic.
Please write here your experience, style of work, if this has sence or there are too many troubles and I should rather give up.
So the question is: How to develop applications that run on Windows with Linux tools, without touching Visual Studio and browsing with Windows file manager etc.
thank you
Not sure, if this will help you or not but there is a Vim Emulation layer for Visual Studio 2010 called VsVim.
Check out : http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329
If I were you I'd install MinGW or Cygwin on your windows machine and just use gvim/vim anyway (or maybe just use the Win32 vim).
VS is just a big editor. You'll be building with the microsoft compilers ( perhaps using msbuild or nmake ) but probably are going to have to accept that you can only debug windows things with VS ( unless you build for MinGW or Cygwin and use gcc and gdb)
You can use vim as a code editor, you can even stick on Linux when developing software for the .NET platform. The people behind the Mono make this happen. Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.
You can stick to the editor of your liking and use the tools that come with Mono to compile your stuff. There is a IDE called Mono Develop, but compared to Visual Studio it is pretty basic... and compared to VIM it lacks simplicity.
C# projects are plain text files so it's easy enough to edit them over an SMB share in whatever editor you wish from anywhere the sysadmins let you.
Testing however will be difficult without going back to the windows machine, and while Mono implements the framework, it's still a different environment if you're targeting Windows.

What IDE should I use for Linux module development?

I have Ubuntu 11.04 and am looking to start developing Linux modules. I use Visual Studio for C development in Windows, but I guess that's not an option for Linux. What would be a good IDE to work Linux modules ?
Depending on what you want to do there are number to choose from. However I think the closest one to visual studio equivalent will be eclipse.
From the FAQ:
Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on
building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application
frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the
entire software lifecycle. Many people know us, and hopefully love us,
as a Java IDE but Eclipse is much more than a Java IDE.
The Eclipse open source community has over 200 open source projects.
These projects can be conceptually organized into seven different
"pillars" or categories:
Enterprise Development
Embedded and Device Development
Rich Client Platform
Rich Internet Applications
Application Frameworks
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
The Eclipse community is also supported by a large and vibrant ecosystem of major IT > > > solution providers, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and > individuals that extend, support and complement the Eclipse Platform.
One very exciting thing about Eclipse is that many people are using
Eclipse in ways that we have never imagined. The common thread is that
they are building innovative, industrial-strength software and want to
use great tools, frameworks and runtimes to make their job easier.
It is all just a matter of personal preference.
Apart from what was mentioned in a similar question, I would like to name two more.
In our kernel-related projects, my colleagues and I currently use Geany lightweight IDE which is more than enough for us.
I also use Code::Blocks that resembles Visual Studio 2003 very much, it also does its job well. It has more advanced code completion features than Geany, I suppose.
Eclispe is always a popular choice and a very nice IDE
Eclipse (http://eclipse.org/) is a pretty good IDE. I have tried a few other ones such as KDevelop etc, but I have always found Eclipse to be the best and most stable.
Eclipse + CDT + at least a dual core processor and some Go of RAM and it will be a great adventure to navigate into the kernel sources.

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