This page covers my experiences starting programming for the the Sony Ericsson P800. I hope it will provide some useful advice and help you avoid some gotchas developing for this platform.
I have only just started programming on the Symbian platform, so I would be very happy to hear any suggestions or corrections. If you have any comments please email me at symbian+Steven.Murdoch@cl.cam.ac.uk.
The SDK for the P800/P802 supporting UIQ on Symbian OS v7.0 was fairly simple to install. Since I am not using Codewarrior and just the supplied GCC based tools I did not install any development tool first.
The main part of the SDK is in a Zip archive, split into 6
parts. The first part (which is actually the last in the spanned zip
file) is called uiq_sdk_r2.zip, and the remaining 5 parts
are named uiq_sdk_r2.z01 –
uiq_sdk_r2.z04. I then opened up part 1 —
uiq_sdk_r2.zip and unzipped the archive to a temporary
folder. Winzip handled the
spanned archive automatically. I also downloaded the "Missing
file from the UIQ SDK" and unzipped the
com[1].symbian.q-arm... file into the temporary folder,
but I am not sure if this is necessary.
I then started the setup.exe and followed the
defaults, except for setting the location of the SDK installation to
D:\Symbian. Finally I downloaded the
uiqsdk_update_rc1.zip file, unzipped it to a different
temporary folder and installed it via the setup.exe
application. The symbian_p800_emulator.zip file is simply
an BMP image of the P800 with configuration settings for the
emulator. If you don't have the emulator provided with CodeWarrior
then this file is of no use.
The SDK for the P800 from Sony Ericsson recommends CodeWarrior Development Studio for Symbian OS, however this is expensive ($400 – $1,400). A cheaper option is to use the command-line development tools included in the SDK, based around GCC. This means you cannot use the Codewarrior IDE, but more significantly you cannot use the emulator/debugger nor use the on-phone debugging.
The UIQ SDK is built for Windows NT4/2000/XP and while it is possible to develop for the P800 on Linux, I have gone for the easier option initially and used the supplied Windows tools.
As an example I will go through how I compiled
UIQ_70/UIQExamples/BasicApp. I have more or less followed
the >> UIQ SDK >> C++ >> Getting Started
>> HelloWorld example but have deviated where the
instructions did not work.
To use the development tools I had to add the following to %PATH%:
D:\Symbian\UIQ_70\epoc32\stubs\toolsC:\Perl\binDo not add D:\Symbian\UIQ_70\epoc32\tools, these are
called by the stubs, but the stubs set up environment variables needed
by the tools. Perl was already installed on this machine before the
UIQ SDK so the SDK installer did not install it. However it did not
have all the libraries necessary so I had to add these manually by
setting %PERL5LIB% to
D:\Symbian\UIQ_70\epoc32\tools\perllib.
To register the device with the environment I ran the devices
command: devices -add D:\Symbian\UIQ_70 D:\Symbian\UIQ_70
@UIQ_70:com.symbian.UIQ. The first parameter is where
epoc32 is, the second is where tools is. You
only need to do this once, the device details are saved in the
environments configuration file.
In BasicApp there is already a bld.inf file, but in
some I have seen this has been missing. If you need to create it then
all it needs to contain is the name of the .mmp file. For
example:
PRJ_MMPFILES BasicApp.mmp
To produce the build scripts run bldmake bldfiles
@UIQ_70:com.symbian.UIQ
To build the program run abld build thumb urel
@UIQ_70:com.symbian.UIQ
The thumb parameter specifies the build target
architecture. The .pkg file for this application
specifies it is a thumb application, but the P800 also supports the
armi target. Using thumb code produces applications that
are smaller, but run slower.
In order to send the application to the phone I had to make an SIS file which could then be opened by the software installation tool on the PC connected to the phone.
The configuration file for making a SIS file is a .pkg file. For
BasicApp the .pkg file is supplied as
BasicApp_thumb.pkg, but they are easy to write. The
important lines are:
#{"BasicApp"},(0x101F6164),7,0,0,TYPE=SA
which identifies the application and
(0x101F617B), 2, 0, 0, {"UIQ20ProductID"}
which states that it is compatible with UIQ v2.0. Alternatively the
line:
(0x101F80BE), 1, 0, 0,
{"SonyEricssonP80xPlatformProductID"}
states that it is only compatible with the P80x.
The lines:
"\Symbian\UIQ_70\epoc32\release\thumb\urel\BasicApp.app"-"!:\system\apps\basicapp\basicapp.app"
"\Symbian\UIQ_70\epoc32\data\z\system\apps\BasicApp\BasicApp.rsc"-"!:\system\apps\basicapp\basicapp.rsc"
specify the source and destination for the files to be sent to the
device. For the .app file, note that it is in the
release\thumb\urel folder. If the build
target was armi then in the source filename,
thumb should be replaced by armi.
The condition IF CPUABI=2 specifies that the files
should be installed if and only if the CPU supports the Thumb
instruction set, otherwise it should not exit, but silently install
no files (since the error message is commented out). If the error
message is uncommented then it still will install no files, but the
line "nosupport.txt"-"", FILETEXT, TEXTCONTINUE will
cause the contents of nosupport.txt to be displayed in a
dialog box during the installation process, with a
"Continue" button.
To make the SIS file run makesis BasicApp_thumb.pkg
@UIQ_70:com.symbian.UIQ. The SIS file can then be installed
simply by double clicking on it and following the instructions.