S60 Open to new features

Coming soon to a desktop near you will be the latest version of Carbide.c++, namely version 2.0. Most of you know already that Carbide is made from a diverse set of plugins that operate on the Eclipse framework. Many of the improvements we provide come not from us but from the Eclipse community that spent countless hours adding new features to the Eclipse Ganymede release, version 3.4. Using that release as a base we added in the CDT 5.0 plug-ins as well as updated and new Carbide plug-ins. The sum of all this effort is a new Carbide.c++ release, currently v2.0B1, with release planned for later in the year..

So, I'm up in Dallas passing on information to one of the many internal Nokia groups on the current features in Carbide as well as some upcoming technologies we plan to support RSN. With all the new features to be shipped with Carbibe 2.0 it's sometimes hard to remember that others have not already spent 3+ years working with it nor know all of its little secrets. OK, to be honest I don't know them all either, but with all the development work happening between Eclipse, CDT, and Carbide, there's a lot to learn with each new release.

One of the features that got misplaced was the exporting and importing of the key bindings. The capability is still there, just not where people expect to find it.

One thing that can confuse some users that are new to Eclipse and Carbide.c++ is the concept of the workspace and how Carbide.c++ makes use of it. Adding to this confusion can be the root directory concept along with some of its limitations, so I figured I would create a screencast for this. So without further delay, take a look at this introduction to these concepts:

You can find this and other videos at: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Carbide_Training_Videos

Got ideas for screencasts you'd like to see? Leave us some feedback here and we'll get on it!

Eclipse contains a host of features and sometimes finding what you want is pretty obscure and simply searching the help may not be, ahem, helpful. As an example, bug #7457 describes a lack of regular expression help in the Find/Replace dialog. It's actually there but not if you look in the Keys preference panel or search the Eclipse documentation.

Here's what to look for and how it works.

With some customers already taking a look at the Milestone 1 release for v2.0, we are getting some questions about licensing errors. The Carbide.c++ Licenses folder is currently blank when you download the tool and this is what will cause the problem.

For now, the current tool will accept v1.3 licenses. We have also posted a temp license on the main page of the Google Group. Here is a link:

http://groups.google.com/group/carbide_cpp-v2-beta/web/license-PRO-Sept.lic

To install the license:

Open up the IDE,
Click Help -> Carbide Licenses -> Install License
Then paste the contents of the license file.

I know there are people out there developing for somewhat elderly devices, and I still get regular questions from users who download Carbide.c++ v1.3 and are unpleasantly surprised when they try to write the ultimate Series 60 2nd Edition application and Carbide refuses to oblige.

To accommodate folks using older kits, we have put Carbide.c++ v1.2 back up for download. It can be found here.

Note that no active development is being done on Carbide v1.2; we simply provide it as a service to people who need it to develop for older kits.

For those of you out there working on Platform Security integration within your project, we have a tool to help: the Capability Scanner. This scanner checks the APIs used throughout your code and reports the capabilities that you must include in your MMP file. If you're looking for a simple introduction on how the capability scanner feature can be used, you've come to the right place. Take a few minutes to watch the newest screencast:

You can find this and other videos at: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Carbide_Training_Videos

Got ideas for screencasts you'd like to see? Leave us some feedback here and we'll get on it!

If you're not sure what all those different signing options are for when creating .sis files or if you just want to know what options are available for tweaking the build system to add your own little customizations, this is the screencast for you -- it's a basic overview of the Build Configuration Options dialog, but also includes more advanced info like where to go to put in your own command-line parameters if you've been hacking on the bldmake and abld scripts, or if you just want to change how they behave.

Have you ever wondered exactly how to use the CodeScanner tool? Well if so, you're in luck! This week's screencast installment features this topic:

You can find this and other videos at: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Carbide_Training_Videos

Got ideas for screencasts you'd like to see? Leave us some feedback here and we'll get on it!

In Carbide 1.3.1 we revamped the wording and internal code for the generation of console output. Mainly this was done to unify the option's wording and make it easy identify which console program and error output was sent to. Remember, the Console view has several default pages associated with it.

However, an additional step was overlooked in the Carbide manual, the editing of the epoc.ini file, which must be made for a couple of these options to work. Here's how to correct that.