Friday 30 January 2009

Windows CE: Development tools considerations part III

Hi all,

as promised let’s continue with answering the 2nd question.

Question:
What if some developers rather use a command line than the PlatformBuilder IDE?

Answer:
Well this is a simple task. Starting with Windows CE 5.0 Microsoft introduced a feature called unified build. This great feature ensures that the outcome of a command line build is exactly the same as the outcome of a PlatformBuilder IDE. This is possible as the IDE is just a thin layer above the command line and hence there is a one-to-one mapping of the command line calls to the IDE. But you might find that you can not just use any command line it has to be one that you open from within the PlatformBuilder IDE. Now why is that? Well, when opening a command line from within the PlatformBuilder IDE, wince.bat is called which sets up the command line for you in accordance with the specific project settings.

NOTE:
Please don’t call wince.bat directly, we will discuss how to set up a command line outside of the PlatformBuilder IDE when answering the 4th question, so please be patient.

Now there are multiple possibilities to open a command line from within the PlatformBuilder IDE:

  • From the IDE select Build -> Open Release Directory in Build Window

  • Right clicking the desired directory in the Solution Explorer and selecting Open Build Window will open a command line with the correct path to that directory

So as you see as a developer you can either use the command line or the PlatfromBuilder IDE to build your system. The output will be the same.

Have fun!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do i know how can i open command line in Wince 5.0 suitable device.

I have one device that has fully installation of wince 5.0 and now i want to run my application using command line.

as we know that to open command line in windows we have Command prompt but what about in wince?? please help me for that

Unknown said...

Do i know how can i open command line in Wince 5.0 suitable device.

I have one device that has fully installation of wince 5.0 and now i want to run my application using command line.

as we know that to open command line in windows we have Command prompt but what about in wince?? please help me for that

Damian Barnett said...

Hi Kalpesh and anonymous (one & the same person? :-)

The answer to your question depends highly on the image running on your device.

If you have a "full" installation you should be able to open the Command Prompt in one of these ways:

1) Select "Start\Run" from the taskbar and type "cmd". To type "cmd" you will of course need some kind of input device either a keyboard or a SIP=Soft Input Panel.
On some devices the SIP is opened automatically when input is required. On other devices you can open the SIP via the taskbar (right-hand side).

2) Some devices have cmd.exe in the start menu: Select "Start/Programs/Command Prompt" from the task bar.

3) Open the explorer Browse to the "Windows" directory and double click / select "cmd.exe"

If you would like to have some screenshots let us know and we can post something around this topic.

So long and thanks for all the fish!