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.
Related
Can a C# app prototype be developed on my iPad Pro by using ONLY Visual Studio with Xamarin, on my Windows 10 Pro computer without buying (ie. using) a Mac?
Initially, for rapid development of non-distribution prototype, I want to use only VS 2017 Pro & Xamarin on Windows 10 to develop and test an app on my iPad Pro 12.9".
App will talk to other system components by WiFi, and utilize new iPad Pro features like pen and its high quality screen, for augmented reality.
Can get Mac later, in order to deploy on Apple store.
Can I truly develop, deploy onto actual iPad, and debug 100% with only VS & Xamarin, and without Mac and Xcode?
This Microsoft article about its Xamarin Live Player is confusing to me because it reads "the source code is interpreted" which I don't want, and later it reads "The app runs right on your phone or tablet." is I want.
Yes, a mac is required to build and debug iOS apps.
However, VSTS does allow you access to a mac build host which can build and deploy to TestFlight and the AppStore, if required (and if configured correctly). This won't allow you to debug and step through your code on a device or in the iOS Simulator, however. For that you need the Mac with High Sierra and the latest XCode installed.
Xamarin Live Player is in preview only and is only really useful for simple apps at the moment.
So, the answer is the company needs to buy me a new Mac. Yum.
The bad news is that it's back to using Xcode again. Two years ago, the star rating of Xcode on Apple Store was a mere 2-stars. It would be nice if the tool to develop on iOS was as easy to use as iOS. But, that's what Stackoverflow is for, I guess. :)
Whilst the existing answers/comments are correct I thought I'd add my own experience with this
If, like me, you won't use the mac for anything other than a build server for xamarin, I can say that a mac mini is fine for this, and will allow you to build apps. Just make sure you connect visual studio on your PC to the mac.
It's also worth noting, that more recently Visual studio team services has started using a hosted macOS build host. I haven't used this myself as I bought a mac mini, but in theory, if you use VSTS you might be able to build and deploy your iOS apps. I would suggest that you check it out.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vsts/pipelines/apps/mobile/xamarin?view=vsts&tabs=vsts
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/11/16/cloud-hosted-mac-agents-for-ci-cd-pipelines/
Sadly this has always been the case with xamarin and it's the way apple licensing works.
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.
I'm a .NET developer and want to write an IOS & Android app in C#. I've had a read around Xamarin for Visual Studio which looks interesting if not a tad expensive!
Do you need a Mac to debug your code? Do you just need a networked Mac to actually deploy the app to the Store?
Is the best option just to buy a Mac and run Windows with VS in a VM or can I just use my windows machine, write & debug the code in Windows then just hook up to a networked Mac for final deployment?
From May 2017, you can develop app without MAC.
Microsoft Xamarin introduce a Live Player. With Live Player, iOS apps can be deployed directly onto an iPhone or other iDevice from a PC running Visual Studio, where the code can then be tested and debugged.
WARNING The Xamarin Live Player Preview has ended. But it changed Hot Reload. With this feature, you can develop iOS app with your iPhone See discussion
See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awgZDL1a3YI
this is Live Player Get start section: Live Player
Note: The final build and submission to the App Store will still require a Mac
Device Requirements
The Xamarin Live Player app supports the following devices:
iOS
iOS 9.0 or later.
ARM64 processor.
Check the App Store for a list of supported devices.
Android
Android 4.2 or later.
ARM-v7a, ARM-v8a, ARM64-v8a, x86, or x86_64 processor.
Limitations
There are some limitations on the things Xamarin Live Player can run, including the items below:
Android user interfaces designed with AXML files are not currently supported.
Some iOS storyboard features are not supported.
iOS XIB files are not supported.
Custom Renderers are not supported.
Xamarin.Forms Effects are not supported.
Embedded resources are not supported (ie. embedding images or other resources in a PCL).
Limited support for reflection (currently affects some popular NuGets, like SQLite and Json.NET). Other NuGets are still supported.
Some system classes cannot be overridden (for example, you cannot implement a subclass).
Some platform features that require provisioning can't work in the Xamarin Live Player app (however it has been configured for common operations like camera access).
Custom targets and build steps are ignored. For example, tools like Fody cannot be incorporated.
Yes, you must have a Mac to do Xamarin.iOS development. The Mac is required for building as well as running the iOS simulator. You can either use it as a build server, and actually do your development in Visual Studio (either in a standalone PC, or on a VM running on your Mac), or you can do your development directly on the Mac using Xamarin Studio as your IDE.
You can use Xamarin Studio instead of Visual Studio and build iOS application by C#.
First install VMware Workstation and then download OS X image and run it by VMware.
Then Install tools on it and enjoy.
Tools :
EDIT : The following links are out dated, You must install Mac OS 10.10 in order to be able to install XCode 6.
iOS Tools that you need:
1) Mac OS X image for Windows
Note: Max OS X Installation Help:
http://www.sysprobs.com/easily-run-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-retail-on-pc-with-vmware-image
2) Mono:
http://download.xamarin.com/MonoFrameworkMDK/Macx86/MonoFramework-MDK-3.2.4.macos10.xamarin.x86.pkg
3) Xamarin Studio:
http://download.xamarin.com/studio/Mac/XamarinStudio-4.2.1-1.dmg
4) MonoTouch:
http://download.xamarin.com/MonoTouch/Mac/monotouch-7.0.4.209.pkg
5) Xcode
Update 2018
Install VirtualBox
https://www.virtualbox.org/
Install MacOs 10.13 on VirtualBox
https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-high-sierra-virtualbox-windows/
Create or login with an apple account on the mac
Install XCode 9.0
https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Xcode_9/Xcode_9.xip
Enable Remote Login
System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login > Enable for All Users
Configure VirtualBox with an additional network adaptor (host-only)
In Windows > Visual Studio (Xamarin Project) > Pair with mac
Enter the IPaddress of the second network adaptor
Let Visual studio install Xamarin IOS, IOS SDK, additional tools on the Mac
All set up.
An option is to use a remote service to do this.
For example:
http://www.macincloud.com
Anybody know that a Virtual-Machine is the solution! but when you want to have an OSX on windows it's not really easy as you just talked about it.
it's very important to find best OS ROM.
check it out here.
and you have to know that limitation is Apple's doing, not Xamarin's.
As someone that developed 3 Xamarin Forms apps, I would like to bring some points about the options:
Pair with a virtual Mac (VMWare, VirtualBox or cloud)
I worked this way for a while, but virtual machines consume a lot of hardware resources. Paid for a month to use a remote Mac, but the pairing and debugging process does not get much better.
Develop inside a virtual macOS
I have been using this option with good results. I just run everything on the macOS VMware virtual machine. Visual Studio and Emulator got a little slow (my CPU is i5 and 8GB ram), but is acceptable to make some adjusts. Advantages: Avoid pairing, Xcode to edit some resources, publishing.
Install macOS on Windows PC
This is kind of upgraded of previous suggestion. Didn't tested yet, but the performance should be better than VMWare if it works. They call this Hackintosh and is possible if your hardware is compatible.
I am developing a tool to view information, Files and folders of wince device in WPF. I am able to connect, Disconnect and View Folder structure by following sample from this link.
Everything works fine on developer machine. My machine is Windows XP and I am using VS2008.But when I take WPF exe and run it on a machine where only .net framework installed I am not able to connect to device. Then I installed .net Compact Framework 3.5, and followed same steps provided in link except i don't have visual studio installed on that deployed machine.
Please provide me steps to connect to device without installing Visual Studio. And Am not sure whether it will connect to device without visual studio. So please help.
CoreCon is installed by Visual Studio, and is not available separately.
If you want to manipulate the device's file system from your PC, and the device is connected using ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Center, you can use the Remote API, RAPI. If you want to use C#, you can use the OpenNETCF Desktop Communication Library, which wraps up RAPI.
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).