S60 Open to new features

I just spent the last week documenting the changes in Carbide concerning its new ability to import and create Qt projects on S60 SDKs. As many of you are probably already familiar with Nokia purchased Trolltech a few months ago and one of our goals for the Carbide 2.0 release is to make it possible to use Carbide as your Qt development environment.

For those of you that are unaware of Qt, note that its a cross-platform application framework that works on many different OSes including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and embedded platforms.

We are closing in on the release of Carbide.c++ v2.0M1 to begin public testing. As those of you in software development know this is an exciting, exhausting, and terrifying time as everyone involved works to make sure that the first public revealing of a new product release goes smoothly.

We have several exciting improvements for you to delve into, not the least of which is our update of Carbide to use the latest Eclipse 3.4 and CDT 5.0 Ganymede releases for Carbide.c++ 2.0. Lots of basic platform and C/C++ improvements should make for an exciting release.

I've just spent the last week revising the entire launch configuration section of the Carbide manual to make it easier to understand, remove redundancies, and show its advantages when writing and debugging projects. The whole concept of a launch configuration was a bit strange to me when we first began developing Carbide but its gradually become a critical component to understanding how to link the code you write with one or more ways of running or debugging it to ensure its correctness. Therefore it seemed an obvious choice for a good edit and update. So that's what I've done.

Recently a Carbide developer requested some additional help with the Carbide.c++ Plug-in Developer Guide in the form of examples. The specific request, bug #6751, asks for assistance with "how to do builds using [the] Carbide APIs". It seemed a reasonable request and one we are now looking at doing in the near future.

For those using Carbide.c++ 1.1, you'll be glad to know that our beta program is progressing well and we're planning to release Beta Release 3 over the course of the weekend. Feedback is positive and we're expecting to fix a lot of user-reported issues in the last few cycles. Once the product nears its GM date we'll start providing more info via the blog.

We're also thinking about releasing the final Beta release publicly, via Forum Nokia. If you're developing with OpenC or PIPS, this could make your life easier as target type support is built-in with 1.2.

Oh yeah. On a related note: if you're interested in posix-C development on Symbian, Erik Jacobson (Symbian's product manager for Open Environment & PIPS) seems to be pretty active on the Symbian blog. Which, as anything cool on the web these days, seems to still be in beta.

 Whereas this blog focuses on a lot of the end-result product and the gathering of requirements to get there, Ken Ryall from our team blogs about the work we do around Eclipse and CDT to get it to work for Symbian. As one of our most senior developers and and as a CDT committer, he'll be sure to have insights about how to successfully create Eclipse/CDT-based software. If you're writing plug-ins for Carbide.c++, or Eclipse in general, Ken's blog will be a good starting point.

http://nokiacarbideoneclipse.blogspot.com

I've also added the site to the blogroll on the right. Take a look and please extend him a warm welcome to the blogosphere!

Here's another screencast... By Tim Kelly, a Forum Nokia Champion and a developer on our team. In the screencast, Tim showcases the build system options and operation. The new build system is quite significantly different than the one used in Carbide.c++ 1.1, and I think you'll find it easy to use and intuitive. If not, let me know!

View the screencast here (Finally, in Flash!). English captions are provided!

I've also updated the MMP editor screencast to run on Flash. It also has english captions. Download it here.

 I'm a new at this so be gentle -- but I've just created a short (~7 minute) screencast on Carbide.c++ 1.2 that highlights one of the new features in this release, the MMP. The MMP editor provides a visual editor into the actual MMP file, and simplifies some of the management tasks associated with working with MMPs. I'm hoping it'll be a great way for new developers to learn the MMP model, and that experienced developers will enjoy having less hassle to deal with. Let me know what you think!

Download the screencast here (It's Windows Media Video - WMV).

Update: The screencast is now easier on the eyes (Flash format, not WMV), and has English subtitles. Download it here.

Carbide.c++ 1.2 has been in development since September. The product improves on some of the key areas where 1.1 users were left wanting. Most significantly, 1.2 has a completely re-designed build system that imports and builds complex projects with ease, and provides nice usability enhancements like an MMP and INF editor. It also introduces our most advanced product, the OEM Edition. Eric from NewLC has the details on the product plans...

The Alpha release of 1.2 is already available to those who have signed up to participate in the beta program. We're planning to provide a number of drops to the beta group before releasing the product (currently targeted for May 2007). If you want to participate in the beta program, you can sign up by clicking here.

Just a quick note to update on our status in platform security tooling: The capability scanner is currently under development here at Nokia, and the certificate manager will be developed by Symbian. We're currently anticipating getting the capability scanner into beta around Christmas; final product to be available first as a plug-in for Carbide.c++ 1.1 in February, and then integrated into Carbide.c++ 1.2 in May. I haven't received any commitment from Symbian on the certificate manager, but I trust it'll be ready during Q1 as well. After that, platform security should be a little less annoying...

Our only remaining problem is the quality of the API-Capability documentation that is used as a the basis for the capability scanning. Apparently, Symbian's documentation on the subject is in pretty good shape, but our SDK documentation on the topic is a little shaky and needs improvement before we can call it a day. However, I think everyone in Nokia is feeling the platform security headache, so roadblocks are quickly being reduced.