I have about 20 app demos, mostly for Windows Mobile but some for Windows CE. They were all created in Visual Studio 2008 for Mobile 6.1, Mobile 6.5, and CE 5.0. They are a mix of C# and VB.NET. I've been asked to update them.
I've done a fair bit of research, and I understand you can't do the standard Visual Studio project conversion, but is there anyway to salvage these projects? Ideally, I need to get them running on the current version of Windows Mobile/CE and compiling in the current Visual Studio. Is there any hope for them?
The latest version of Windows Mobile/CE is WEC 2013, and is supported in VS2012 and later. Note that for .NET CF development you will need an Application Builder SDK from the device vendor.
Whether you will be able to port the applications really depends on what they do.
For instance, one of the main differences between CE 5.0 (and its mobile derivatives that you mention) and WEC 2013 is that in WEC 2013 user mode code can no longer access hardware directly, so if the applications rely on direct hardware access you will need to find or implement device drivers to do this. On a related note, P/Invoke is always a potential cause for concern when porting.
You'll also need to determine if the target device includes all the OS features that are required by the applications. Remember Windows CE / WEC are componentized OS's, and the device vendor might have excluded features from the OS image that the applications need in order to function.
Related
I know I need a mac to deploy but can I at least use my PC to develop the application? It would really help me a lot if I can develop on Windows where I can focus on writing the app.
This answer covers only Xamarin 2.0. Unfortunately I don't know MonoTouch.
Take a look at this statement about Xamarin 2.0:
Xamarin 2.0 bundles the company's Android, iOS and Mac development
tools in a single affordable package aimed at all tiers of developers.
The free Starter edition includes the Xamarin Studio IDE enables
developers to create Android, iOS and Mac apps using C#. However, the
free edition doesn't allow developers to exceed 32k of compiled IL
code and it cannot import or call upon any third-party libraries. The
$299 Indie edition removes this restriction. Things start getting
really interesting for .NET developers with Xamarin Studio's $999
Business edition. This version adds the ability to code iOS
applications within Visual Studio. Yes, you read correctly — code
iOS applications in Visual Studio! Granted, you still need a Mac to
compile and deploy the application to iOS devices (more on that
later), but the fact that you can use a familiar IDE to develop iOS
applications is a game changer.
To make it short: Yes you will need a mac to deploy your application and
yes you can develop on windows using Visual Studio.
Source: http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/xamarin-20-review/240150634
No you don't need the 1 k version to compile on windows. When you want to deploy your app you need to buy it! If u are making a app for windows 8 or whatever you dont need to pay. Monogame is a open source project. For the deployment to the phones your paying to the xamarin project.
"This means that your Xamarin iOS for Visual Studio installation requires a networked Mac OS-X computer to perform these tasks for you. Once configured, Xamarin’s tools will make the process as seamless as possible, but the fact remains that a Mac is required in addition to the Windows computer running Visual Studio."
So still need to hook up my mac and perform all the installations and configurations. Will take time but not a deal breaker I guess.
It is possible to use cloud build services for such a task. One such service worth giving a try is http://ship.io - they offer a free plan to get started.
I amm new to window CE application development. I am familiar with C# language. I have experience with web application development and have 0 knowledge on smart device application development.
I have Visual Studio 2008 Professional installed, currently using MySql database. I need to develop an application on MC 70 Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, which allows to scan a QR code, display the information stored in the QR code and store those information to database via internet.
From my research, VS 2010 does not support window CE apps, so I downloaded VS2008 professional edition.
My question is: Besides VS 2008 Pro and MySql database, what are other compatible supporting software needed? There are many info on net such as virtual PC7, emulator 3.0/5.0.
My PC is a 64 bit system.
Actually, developing an application for a mobile device is not much different from developing an application on the desktop - only that the Compact Framework as less capabilities in areas that are not so important on a mobile device.
From my experience - I develop mobile applications for industrial devices with .NET on a daily basis - it is best not to work with the emulator, but debug on the device itself, which is easy with Visual Studio. The first step is to connect the device to your system and make sure that whenever you cradle the device, the Windows Mobile Device Center pops up and you can browse the device's file system.
To communicate with the database, I suggest that you develop two things: 1) the mobile software, which (for example via WCF or TCP/IP) communicates with 2) a service that does the database work.
Additional Note
There is an edition of Visual Studio 2010 ("Phone Edition"), but it is meant to develop software for the Windows Phone operating system. You are actually on the safe side when using Visual Studio 2008.
Of course you need to make sure to download and install the SDK provided by the manufacturer for the respective mobile device. For an MC 70 this is the so called EMDK, which can be downloaded for free from the Motorola web site.
I don't have a Windows machine, just a Mac and a Linux box. Windows it pretty expensive, and I don't want to pirate it either.
Is it possible to develop Windows Phone 7 apps in Mac OS X or Linux? Is Visual Studio required?
If you want an affordable and legal copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, a system builder license is available for $99.
There are countless reports of this running great in virtualization software on Mac OS X and Linux.
I personally ran Windows 7 in VirtualBox on Ubuntu 10.10 and it was a great experience. Definitely a practical environment to develop Windows applications in.
Once you've got Windows 7, all the development tools you need (including the phone emulator) are free from Microsoft.
No.
That being said maybe it is possible to run Visual Studio for Windows Phone (which is free) on Linux via Wine but I doubt it.
You can do some Silverlight development on Linux and learn some of the XAML and C# concepts and apply them later on Windows Phone but you won't be able to write a real WP app without a Windows machine.
Is Visual Studio required?
Your profile says you're 16 years old. You more than likely qualify for Microsoft's DreamSpark program. Even homeschooled kids qualify. This means you have legal free access to Visual Studio 2010 Professional.
I haven't tried this myself, but I think you can do this using PhoneGap and their PhoneGap Build service.
However I imagine its a pretty painful debug cycle without the emulator (which I understand you need Windows for).
While all of my machines are Macs, I actually really enjoy working in .NET. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at writing a Silverlight application. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, Silverlight is not a part of Mono that actually works on OS X.
Is it possible to develop Silverlight on OS X, or will I need to use a VM? If it's possible, is Mono the only option, or is there some other way?
Have you heard of Moonlight?
Taken from the project page:
Moonlight is an open source
implementation of Silverlight
(http://silverlight.net), primarily
for Linux and other Unix/X11 based
operating systems. In September of
2007, Microsoft and Novell announced a
technical collaboration that includes
access to Microsoft's test suites for
Silverlight and the distribution of a
Media Pack for Linux users that will
contain licensed media codecs for
video and audio.
According to go-mono.com, you can use MonoDevelop to develop for Silverlight/Moonlight on Mac OS X.
I'd probably stick with a VM - I use VM's on my mac all the time, and Visual Studio is perfectly usable (obviously that does depend on your mac's spec)...
If you want it all for free, you can use VirtualBox, install windows on there (you can always use an evaluation if you don't own it), and then use Visual Studio Express - this SO question tells you how to set Visual Studio Express up for SL dev... Developing Silverlight in Visual Studio Express?
There was a Silverlight development tool that ran in Eclipse called Eclipse tools for Silverlight. It has a Mac version. It looks a bit stagnant though, so I don't know it's current status.
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/
MonoDevelop does have moonlight projects built-in, so there shouldn't be any issue.
Also- while this prob doesn't fit your case, I bootcamped my MBP and while it's freaky running Win7 + vStudio on mac hardware, it works quite well.
Silverlight is comptatible for MAC OSX via a separate project, whose name I forget. Microsoft release the source code for silverlight to some people that are working on implementing on other platforms, including MAC
However, this means that it's always at least one version late, so MAC users can have access to silverlight 3, but not 4.
Old Mac that are not intel processors, only have access to silverlight 1.
Look at this page for a compatiblity list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight#Silverlight_4
Will their be a new release of the compact framework with VS2010 and .net 4.0 and if so what new features will it include?
WPF?
linq to SQL?
etc
Visual Studio 2010 only supports developing for windows phone 7. This is a silver light based framework, it does not support win forms or native code.
VS2010 can not be used to develop for Windows Mobile 6.5 or lower.
You can however install VS2008 along side VS2010.
From what I heard from guys in redmond, there will be a mobile silverlight platform for both windows mobile and nokia (symbian, I think).
The "silverlight mobile" platform should be built on top of the compact framework, so it will NOT be a port of the desktop version.
There seems to be an information embargo on Windows Mobile right now, but I think things will be much clearer once Windows Mobile 7 is out.
I'm not sure about 4.0 for compact devices (although it seems likely),
and I don't know about WPF either, but I can tell you they are going to provide Silverlight for mobile devices giving you access to a subset of WPF.
Haven't found any other references yet...
You can go here and vote to have Microsoft add Compact Framework Support for Visual Studio 2010.
UPDATE: MS has more or less abandoned existing feature requests in Connect. Please go to the new User Voice site to vote for this feature.
There's an unofficial release of CF 3.7 kicking around the intertubes:
http://www.google.com/search?q=compact+framework+3.7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
It appears that someone ripped it off a ROM image and dropped it in a torrent.