Nokia 6600/Borland C++BuilderX General Questions

[Jon Russell]

Hello,

We are currently developing an application for the 6600, using the following development evironment:

Borland C++BuilderX Mobile Edition
Series 60 SDK v2.1 (Borland & Microsoft)
Nokia 6600 phones

Before we do any serious development, we need a stable, useable development environment, but are experiencing a few problems. Just wondering if anyone can clear any of these issues up

1) In C++BuilderX, many times, the build errors do not show up in the build window. We have refer to the Build Log to see what the errors are. This is very time consuming as the build log is quite long & the window is not searchable. It seems to be an error parser problem. Is there any configuration settings for the error parser?

2) On target debugging. this seems to be a popular topic of discussion. Is there a set of RunStub/GDBStub applications that REALLY work together on the 6600? If there is, can someone PLEASE tell us where to get them. We have had some moderate success with one GDBStub version (very moderate), but it doesn't seem to work with RunStub. Whenever there is a communication/software problem (8 out of 10 times), the phone must be restarted to reset GDBStub...again very time consuming. On target debugging seems to be very painful (I have restarted my phone at least a hundered times in the past 3 days). We hopefully will not have to do much debugging on the device, but I'm sure we will have to do some & this process is unacceptable. Should we even be using the 6600 - is there a better device to debug with?

3) Is it possible to debug for the 6600 with CodeWarrior - will MetroTrk run on the 6600?

4) With C++BuilderX, it seems it takes forever to launch the emulator for debugging. We have upgraded our hardware (very speedy machines), but I have noticed our developers are spending a large amount of time waiting for the emulator to launch. The emulator launches much faster from Visual Studio. Is there a way to speed up this process in BuilderX (maybe use 'attach to process')?

5) Is anyone using Eclipse for development/debugging? I was thinking about trying to use Eclipse, but it seems nobody is using it for Symbian. What are the road blocks in setting up Eclipse as a Symbian IDE?

We would like to continue developing for the 6600, but at this rate our project will be done by 2010 :)

As we do not have an in-house expert for C++BuilderX, I feel that many of our problems may be simple configuration issues.
If anyone has any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated, and if anyone is experiencing the same problems, please reply - maybe we can work together.

Cheers,

Jon

[ArneH]

Hi,

first of all you should install the Series 60 SDK 2.0
v2.1 is for 7610 and 6620. Should also work on 6600 but better to use the right SDK.
To your questions:
1) I faced the same problems but didn't find any solution yet. I've started watching the build window if "petran" is called. If it's not called the CBuilder will tell you that it has compiled successful but your sis file will hold old content. Also I've noticed that the build window of the wins build shows more errors then the one of armi.

2) Same as 1) Tried the gdb deliverd with the SDKs and the one deliverd with Borland without success.

3) Don't know, but it should work

4) Only solution I found is spending more money in Hardware. I'm using 1,7GHz Centrino and 512MB RAM and it still could be a bit more.

5) As far as I know Eclipse is a java IDE? Also until now there is no support for Eclipse yet, I think Nokia is going to release a java SDK supporting Eclipse.

[vmakinen]

As far as I know Eclipse is a java IDE? Also until now there is no support for Eclipse yet, I think Nokia is going to release a java SDK supporting Eclipse.

http://newlc.com/article.php3?id_article=497

Please drop a line or two to this forum if you end up trying Eclipse plug-in.


-veikko

[pzul_wisner]

"3) Is it possible to debug for the 6600 with CodeWarrior - will MetroTrk run on the 6600?"

I think Metrowerks confessed that on-device debugging does not work on any Series60 device.

"4) With C++BuilderX, it seems it takes forever to launch the emulator for debugging. We have upgraded our hardware (very speedy machines), but I have noticed our developers are spending a large amount of time waiting for the emulator to launch. The emulator launches much faster from Visual Studio. Is there a way to speed up this process in BuilderX (maybe use 'attach to process')?"

Try removing all breakpoints before starting the emulator. This makes a considerable improvement in startup time with VC++. NET. I have not tried C++BuilderX.

[trafcam]

"1) In C++BuilderX, many times, the build errors do not show up in the build window. We have refer to the Build Log to see what the errors are. This is very time consuming as the build log is quite long & the window is not searchable. It seems to be an error parser problem. Is there any configuration settings for the error parser?"

I found the same thing, using CBX to develop for UIQ platform. In contrast the (free) Nokia / Borland download for Series 60 had much better error reporting. I don't know if this is still available, but I found it ironic that by paying for CBX, I actually had a worse environment for development.

I wrote my very first application for any phone platform using the free Nokia download, and without error reporting it would have been impossible. In contrast, even porting from S60 to UIQ with the relatively minor changes that entails has been relatively difficult because of the lack of error reporting. I found that compiling for WINS instead of ARMI gives much better error reporting, but it also fails to compile, giving errors where the ARMI compiler is quite happy.