Friday 1 May 2009

Windows CE and SDK names

Hi folks,

imagine the following scenario: You, as an application developer for Windows CE, get yet another Custom Platform SDK from your BSP vendor. So far so good but upon installation of this particular Custom Platform SDK you see that its installation name is something totally generic like “WinCE SDK (ARMV4I)”. This wouldn’t really pose a problem if it was the only Custom Platform SDK installed on your machine. But as you can easily see it will be a huge problem if you have 5, 10 or even more Custom Platform SDKs installed. Now it is nearly impossible to remember which SDK belongs to which platform.

So is there a way to rename a Custom Platform SDK upon installation without asking the BSP vendor for a new one with an appropriate name? We tried different things to figure out a solution for this problem:
  • Looking for the name of the Custom Platform SDK in the registry – unsuccessful

  • Patching the SDK .msi installer file with Orcaunsuccessful

  • Studying the SDK installation process with Sysinternals Process MonitorBINGO

Names and other information about installed Windows CE Custom Platform SDKs can be found in the file:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcpackages\WCE.VCPlatform.config
All you need to do after changing the name in the above file is to restart Visual Studio and your Custom Platform SDK will appear with your new name.

As you can see it is important for BSP developers to always export Custom Platform SDK with descriptive names!

Have fun!

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