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Targeting PocketPCs With Mono?
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?"
I know this is going to come off as unhelpful, but if you're going to be developing projects of any complexity on Microsoft platforms, you're going to have to deal with Visual Studio sooner or later. Suck it up and learn it -- it's not as horrible as it looks at first glance, and in time, you may even come to like it (heresy on Slashdot, I know).
i don't understand how you say your a mac fan but have decided to steer away from a tool that would help you the most.
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.
Sharpdevelop supposedly supports the .NET Compact Framework: http://www.sharpdevelop.com/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx
You can also find tutorials to help get you started here: http://netcf2.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.
Going after those PocketPC's with no energy like that. Wait a few weeks til they're healthy, for pity's sake!!
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:
But really, if you're writing serious software for Windows CE, you're going to have to loose your inhibitions and learn to use Visual Studio.
How do people debug using MonoDevelop or mono in general ? The debugger in MonoDevelop is already missing/broken for a loooooooooong time. And no, writing to the console doesn't count.
...kissing or otherwise sharing saliva, or by exchanging IP datagrams with another infected PocketPC. A PocketPC with Mono should be allowed to sleep for 4-6 weeks, and will eventually recover when the virus runs out of resources. Although a standard virus scanner may detect Mono, once infected, the system can not be purged, even through a reboot. However, since the virus is self-terminating, regular performance will eventually be restored.
MonoDevelop is, as far as I can tell, as similar to Visual Studio as they can possibly make it, so if you don't like Visual Studio I'm not sure this is going to get you anywhere. But you don't have to use Visual Studio to develop for .NET, even if you're running Windows. You can use whatever text editor you want and then invoke the compiler (csc.exe) on the command line if that's what you're more comfortable doing.
Personally, I have found Visual Studio to be the single Microsoft product I actually like -- the 'inline' documentation is a major timesaver -- but to each his own...
I've used Visual Studio to develop a handheld app (using C# and the .Net Compact Framework v1.1) and two things struck me immediately:
(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 PC had crashed, even after using it for weeks. It's just pathetic.
I switched to using C++, wxWidgets and SQLite for my next app on a handheld, and I'm so happy we did. BTW, both apps are targeted at handhelds with barcode scanners (Symbol), and there are C based SDKs available.
I develop barcoding applications in .NET and life sucks.
.NET APIs lag behind and suck balls. If you are targeting multiple device manufacturers, that is. It's especially helpful since then you don't need to bundle every one of their .NET DLLs with the application.
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
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I don't know if mono runs on Windows CE or Mobil.
.net.
.net, but to have that intermediate step would probably slow you down. If you're on windows use .net. If you're on Linux(or other unix OSes) use Mono. Simple as that.
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
You could use Tcl on PocketPC: http://wiki.tcl.tk/8688
I wonder which model Symbol you are using? We develop apps with Compact Framework on Dell and HP devices all the time and have not experienced what you describe. We also use SQL CE as the database. We have roughly 1300 devices in the field and no speed complaints. We do NOT have barcode scanners on these devices, and that may be a key difference. We use the 2.0 version of the framework.
I've found C# on the devices to be no problem at all. Another post mentioned that they too used the barcode scanner and that they had to write c code to handle it and then pInvoke it. I wonder if the scanner might have been what slowed you down?
Finally, on your (b) item: are you talking about the emulator or Visual Studio itself? I find it is definitely faster to debug directly on the device. The emulator can be pretty slow.
I've made barcode apps for Symbol scanners in Compact Framework 2, (never tried 1.1), and even though the pocketPcs we had sucked balls, the apps were incredibly snappy (they were very complex as far as pocketPC apps go, too). I also never had issues with VS2005 (2003 was awful) as far as speed go, even though I have tons of plugins dragging it down (At my last job I was using Vista with all bells and whistles on on a machine with only 1 gig of RAM, and it was still snappy!!). What kind of code did you rewrite that was automatically generated? Most of what it generates is "make an instance of control, hook event handlers, add control to form". Not many bottlenecks in that...
It did have bugs in the past that made it slower than it should, and in certain very specific situations it will go to a crawl, but it shouldn't be common place...
Put down the crack pipe. .NET is based on the same bytecode + JIT design as Java, with years less maturity. Microsoft only created .NET in the first place because they were legally barred from "embrace, extend, extinguish"ing Java itself. .NET has its merits over Java (and vice versa), but speed is almost identical.
Sam ty sig.
Of course, the FIRST thing I'd suggest to a texteditor+PHP+Javascript programmer Mac user who thinks an IDE is scary is to develop for a not-quite-complete platform (::cough debugger until recently cough::), with an half baked (but with potential...still half baked for now) semi-unsupported IDE, for a port/clone of a framework where even the official version is hard to get info on... yes.....
.NET or other alternatives, though none as "simple" as a text editor with PHP), you'll be stuck rewriting it (or your replacement will, depending on your situation), just like when I was hired to replace that pocket pc web app, but hey, if your requirements are simple enough, thats your alternative.
Anyway, while I feel its stupid, most barcode scanners pocket PCs have built in tools/features/whatever that lets the scanner act as an input device for any application. A place I worked for a long time ago made a PHP/Javascript application that would read the input of the barscore scanner and then parse it on an html form. Thats really simple to do, would use your skillset (minus the fact that Pocket IE sucks balls, even compared to IE 5...so you'll have to scream at the javascript a bit until it does what you want), and you wouldn't have to deal with Visual Studio.
Of course, once you see what all your competitors (if its a product you're making) are doing when using "real" tools (be it
Except that .NET didn't need to keep a certain level of backward compatibility like Java did (since it was "new" at the time), could learn from its predecessor, and most of the system interaction is done using native components (WinForm vs Swing), on top of a vastly superior garbage collection engine.
.NET is a speed demon in the right hands.
The JIT compiler of the next iteration of java (that isn't quite out yet) is totally sick, so that probably will bridge the gap by a lot, but
Here's a link O'Reilly's "Head First C#."
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514822/
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/
That's not a trial. It's a free reduced feature version of Visual Studio 2008.
.NET is extremely fast on Windows CE. Java simply is not. Go try it yourself.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Does that sound like a good idea? Well, that's what I asked, in the first place.
I was aware that I could get an answer like yours. I am reading every single post for ideas, and most of them are really interesting.
I was sure someone would rate this kind of post as a troll. But, most incredibly, I am wasting my time answering your post. Does THAT sound like a good idea?
Don't waste your time answering: it sure doesn't. It's not, in any way, a good idea...
Do you realize how this parses? "Because most people like me, I have problems with Microsoft technologies." Possible conclusions:
A) Problems with your native language portend problems with any complicated subject.
B) It was a serendipitously insightful comment.
B) It was a Freudian slip from a Mac snob.
D) Anyone who tries to read something into it has too much time on his hands.
Visual Studio is just great. If you wish to do something decent on MSFT platforms VS will be your only choice. Download the WM SDK and jump right to it. To create a simple GUI-enabled 'Hello World' application will take you no more than 5'. Also forget about VB, J++, C++ or whatever. C# is what u need.
A few years and two PDAs ago, I coded a C# app for my Pocket PC (WM 2003SE) using both the app and my Linux PC.
I used a port of the DotGNU project as an on-board compiler, 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.
Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
Naaahhh! Showing my face is hard. It's waaaay harder than posting as Anonymous Coward, like I use to do since kindergarten. And this post I am writing has everything the OP needs, like an answer. Why should I bother? Like I knew how to help the poor bastard. I'll just troll anonymously and everything will just be fine.
And that would be you, I presume?
Thanks for those who posted serious answers, even if I accidentally ego-tripped, as try_anything pointed out.
I am following the links, reading carefully and looking for more information.
It seems I'll have to deal with my shortcomings and learn how to use Visual Studio. At least, most of you told me that's the wiser thing to do.
I'll keep looking back here, searching for good answers, but I have some links to follow now.
I would think that as a Mac guy, you would prefer developing for the iPhone.
I'm developing a product for their new iPhone SDK and so far it's going better than I'd dared hope in terms of my learning the environment easily and getting up to speed. The first week was pretty baffling and then it started to come together and by the third week I was feeling very comfortable.
I was using a conventional text editor before I started using Xcode and I can say xcode seems to be pretty easy to learn, straightforward and quick.
One thing I really like about the iPhone development system is that it's a compiled language and so it runs very fast compared to other environments I've used.
While some Slashdotters like Windows Mobile, I have noticed that its market share seems to be shrinking thanks to iPhone, and certainly in terms of design and overall attractiveness there is no comparison. I checked out a Windows Mobile magazine about a month ago, and it was worryingly thin and there were a lot of complaints about it crashing and about iPhone being less versatile but a great deal more fun to use.
With the SDK iPhone will be nearly as versatile as Windows Mobile and I think WM's market share will continue to skid. If you want to develop for a non-Apple platform I'd make it Blackberry since it is similar to iPhone in that it has a large number of very loyal users.
Hope that was of interest.
D
Well, I really don't see all that content on his post.
I do appreciate your post, though. It's really insightful.
I know my question was not a very good one. Still, I wanted to hear from people and I dared to ask.
Thanks for your post. You're writing anonymously, but not cowardly.
See mention of successfully porting Mono to CE here:
"How do I serve webpages from NETCF?"
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2005/02/how-do-i-serve-webpages-from-netcf.html
"2. [...]
c) Port the ASP.NET MONO implementation (not aware of any *public* project that has achieved it, but there are some guys that have done it (ended up at ~1300KB) and if they want to go public with it I am sure they will - I cannot say anything else, I'm afraid)"
If your app really is that simple and cost is that much of an issue Embedded Visual C++ v3 & 4 are both 100% free. They are also very feature-free & may thus be more to your liking that Visual Studio.
Otherwise the best way to get Visual Studio cheaply is a free copy at a local user group launch event, or the "Heros Happen Here" even that's running now (though that's only Visual Studio Standard Edition): http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere
Depending on your licensing situation, the student Dream Spark program is offering the professional version for free: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/
Also look at the "Spark Your Imagination" program for a great deal on not only Visual Studio, but also Platform Builder & actual hardware: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/products/spark/
... If you spend some time with it you'll even come to love Visual Studio, particularly the debugger is worth getting to know. Knowing how to use a debugger separates the professionals from the amateurs, and the Visual Studio debugger is the best there is. If you're using C#, you can even use edit-and-continue efficiently (there is edit-and-continue for C++ also, but it's too limited to be very useful, YMMV).
BTW I'm also a mac user, but I do most of my development on windows because of how good Visual Studio is. XCode is getting there, but it still has a way to go - I don't envy the people at Adobe that had to build a huge app like Photoshop using it...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Yea... I was thinking about it last night. I don't know where did I get the motivation to answer trolls, when there was so many people giving good and serious answers.
My needs are not that urgent. I already have hired some developers for other similar projects, but they keep disappointing me. Most of them can't deliver the apps on time and, when they do, the interface is not well designed.
I disagree with you on the "non-trivial" part, as I see most data collection applications as a kind of crippled CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete -- I think you know it). The classes for barcode reader access (supplied by the device manufacturers) are pretty straight forward to use and the documentation is good.
As I stated originally, my main problem is with the IDE's that are confusing to me.
I was using CF 1.1 (2.0 is said to be faster, but it wasn't available at the time). As for (b), I'm talking about the IDE itself. I just opened the project in Visual Studio 2005, and it still is horribly laggy. Other developers I work with see the same issues, so it's not just my machine. I'm glad to hear your experience is different; my project used SQL CE as the database, and a simple join seems to take forever.
The code that needed to be rewritten was the code generated by the UI design tool - I forget what it's called. I had one form with a tab control on it, and each page has multiple controls on it; it took over four seconds to load. I moved the code around so that the controls for only the visible tab were instantiated as needed, instead of having all the controls on all the tabs instantiated when the form was created. That brought the time down to under a second, which still sucked, but was usable.
(trying to be sarcastic) Why so many Mac users "have some particular problems with Microsoft technologies" ? :)) It looks more and more like disability :) Maybe health insurance industry can do something to help suffering people.