S60 Open to new features

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.

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!

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!

We have yet another screencast to bring to you. This one is a quick overview of some helpful shortcuts for working within Carbide.c++. Hopefully a few of these tips will make Carbide.c++ even easier to use:

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!

For this quick tip I thought it might be helpful to point out where customers can set their own build options in Carbide that take place after our build process. This can be useful for things like running a batch file after the build, but customers haven't always known where to find the option for this. In Carbide.c++ v1.3, with the project highlighted choose the "Project" and "Properties" option from the menu bar.

If you are building scalable (SVG) icons for your S60 application, chances are you are using makefiles without dependency tracking. I've noticed quite a few large projects that contain several icon makefiles without proper dependency tracking which can vastly degrage rebuild performance. For example, taking 15 minutes to rebuild instead of 10 seconds for a dependency check. This is typically due to header files that are always generated under \epoc32\include (e.g. MBG files) and causing subsequent CPP files to be unnecessarily re-compiled and the project re-linked.

One of the more ambitious ideas I have for the next release of Carbide is to throw all of the public Carbide docs onto a website using the Eclipse Infocenter. One of the drivers to do this is to make the information available to Google searches. Most people, including myself, have developed the habit of simply doing a Google search for anything we want and simply ignoring our local resources. In many cases I believe that people sometimes actually forget that they have product documentation on their machine. And let's face it, searching the web has become both a habit and the way things are done.

So I'm sitting in a meeting today discussing how we can improve the UI for Performance Investigator (PI) in future releases. We have a lot of issues to address to improve the usability, clarity, and usefulness of the tool and are working hard to define the changes and when they can be delivered. One of the items to look at struck me by surprise. I didn't know that PI did that and I had actually documented the main feature over a year ago for Carbide 1.2 or so.

Needless to say I was a bit verklempt about the whole issue. Then I realized if I, who worked across the room from the developers didn't know of these features, it was a pretty good bet that the vast Carbide audience hadn't stumbled upon them either.

So, let's talk about them.

The executables view was a great addition to the tool by providing a dymanic list of executables and their source files in an easily accesible area. We've had a few customers who asked for some clarifications on how they can use this view to help them hit breakpoints in DLL's that are launched by their executable.