Develop On Z Course / Distro

[DenJean]

Any news on a RAD/IDE (Delphi/visualage alike)

Not RAD, but in other ways Delpi alike, namely
a Pascal binding to Qt/E. No problems in
setting up cross-compile, lightning fast
compile times.

Pascal Qt/E Zaurus Development

[Hrw]

First I would like to split it into few other options:

- qt/e for sharprom clones
- gtk2 for pdax
- other X11 based for pdax
- qt/e for opie using OE derived distros
- gtk2 using OE derived distros
- other X11 based using OE derived distros

Most of qt/e stuff from sharprom clones can be build for OPIE (if does not need libsl or libdtm) - sometimes it fail because gcc 3.4 is more strict when it comes to C++.

GTK and other X11 based stuff can be build for OE distros or PdaX (or even for those who use X/QT with sharprom clones).

Console stuff can work anyway (after rebuild).

I planned to work on getting easy to install developer stuff in OE derived distros but first have to get 2.6 kernel fixed as my 1G sdcard is not supported now (other cards does not have that problem). With card of such big storage I could work on getting developer stuff working, fixing its dependencies etc. - It is harder to get it working when I have to use 64M rootfs in flash and does not have handy SD card (my 256M sdcard is used in camera so I have only 64M card for such tests ;(

more about it later..

[tombraider]

Is anybody working on this?  I would like to learn how to develop using Windows XP and I have PayPal money burning a hole in my pocket to contribute!
What happened to the $10/person idea???
 

Winbloze

I wish people would stop doing that.
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Most second that!

I've been wanting to code for Z for a month now ... "unfortunately", I use WindowsXP and for the good part of last month, I've been flashing and reflashing my Z with the various roms, because each one almost provide what I need, only to disappoint at the end with a quirk!   That, is also why I want to code for Z.

I've coded for PocketPCs, Palm and HandheldPCs embedded devices but so far all the development platform is on Windows. For Palm, there was Metrowerks that I could use until I switch to PilRC tools and cygwin. As for PPCs and HPCs, it was basically a free download of their IDE for embedded devices + a free download of their SDK for the target platform.

Metrowerks and the IDE tools from MS are basically polished developer products that require the developer to just download and install. The developer has to just concentrate on designing, writing and testing the app he is writing for the device he targets. Either tools feature an emulator that runs on Windows, with the exception of HPC2000 platform, although I mostly code for HPCPro and it works upwards anyway.

PilRC tools and cygwin required abit more effort on the developer to setup the tools, but no rocket science here. It may be a bit daunting for developers not used to command prompts, but since I had my share of unix, linux and dos, it was not too much to bear. Fortunately, I could test out the code using the POSE tools (Palm emulator) on windows although I was not able to (nor need to) debug the code on the fly. For the most part, output debug strings was sufficient.

The one theme common in many reviews I have seen so far for Zaurii products is that there are lesser apps available for users compared to that of Palm or PPCs. If its an indication at all, it implies that there are many more developers on these two other platforms. Here I mean app developers. I doubt these developers would be able to write a kernel for PalmOS or WindowsMobile OS or the likes, but they write good apps that end users love and *use* on a daily basis. If we want more app developers, we need to make it simple to setup the development environment and tools for writing an app for the Z. And having a tool (say cygwin?) on windows is a big bonus. The last I check, there appear to be more pure app developers for windows than there are for linux.

oh, and did I mention that the downloads for the tools for all the platforms I mentioned came below 80mb? Metrowerks came in even lesser ... around 40mb I believe. An environment requiring 7gb of space is daunting for even commercial developers, much less hobbists. I kinda refuse to install VisualStudio.Net when I find it requires 2+ gb of install space and stuck to an older development environment which provided adequate functionalities I needed.

I hope against odds that a Z development distro can be had on a CD or ISO download where developers can just order or download, install, and start coding. This vs download, install, troubleshoot, search, download, install, troubleshoot ...
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[craigtyson]

Dunno, my original thought was to put together a bounty for a development distro with examples / step by step info and how tos or tutorials.  As the poll didnt rase much interest at the time and the thread detracted into MS abuse i didnt see it going to far.  as it turns out there is now a dsl distro for development but iv yet to try it.  To be honest with out an IDE/RAD Im not sure how far id get.  My C was never great, but Delphi allowed me to put my pascal to work in a gui environment.