Windows Embedded Compact 7 - Windows Embedded Silverlight Tools

Hi folks,

Today I want to talk a little more about the Windows Embedded Silverlight Tools (WEST) that come with Windows Embedded Compact 7 (WEC7).

As explained in my Silverlight for Windows Embedded (SWE) tutorial for WEC7, WEST generates most of the C++ glue code that with Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 we would have to write ourselves!

But can WEST be used to write a stand-alone application without Platform Builder?

Well WEST generates a Platform Builder subproject that can not be used out of the box as of now. This subproject contains, amongst others, a sources file, .bib, .reg, .dat, and .db files as well as a .pbxml file. There is no .sln file. So in order to use the Platform Builder subproject generated by WEST, we need to create a solution using the generated source files as well as a WEC7 SDK including SWE support.

How about using WEST to generate code for SWE in Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3?

First of all WEST installs in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 whereas Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 is a plug-in for Visual Studio 2005. So you need to have both versions of Visual Studio installed.

I created a simple SWE project for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 in Expression Blend 2, similar to the one I showed in my SWE tutorial for WEC7. Surprisingly, WEST generated the C++ glue code for my simple SWE project for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 and it even ran without problems on WEC7.

But when trying to import the C++ code generated by WEST into a Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 subproject, I experienced some build errors. After including the correct header files and tweaking the sources file a little, I saw that the API set was extended in SWE for WEC7. In my specific example the SetResource() function as well as the XRXamlSource constructor was extended by a version that takes 2 arguments that is not available in SWE for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3.

After adjusting those calls my WEST generated sample compiled under Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3.

Summary:
I would advice against using WEST to created SWE C++ code for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 as even in my very simple sample project there were a lot of things to take care of manually. Instead rather use fellow MVP Valter Minutes comandline tool XAML2CPP to generate the C++ glue code for SWE for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 projects.

Have fun!