PocketPC 2003 -> WinCE 4.2 in VS .NET 2003

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter B
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P

Peter B

I know PPC 2003 is more or less a WinCe 4.2 UI with some hardware rules. I
have created a relatively large application for PocketPC 2003, which was
intended for a device running PocketPC 2003. If I now find a device running
pure WinCE 4.2 instead, will there be any complications for the development
in VS .NET 2003, or can I keep on running as usual and debug, release and
install on the WinCE 4.2 device?

There is a choice when you create a new project in VS where you choose
PocketPC or WinCE. My WinCE device has a 320x420 display and runs on an
Intel XScale processor (400MHz) (so pretty much like a PPC), and I thought
this might make me PPC projects workable?!?

best regards,

/ Peter ... "advancing" into the WinCE world...
 
If you used anything that is PocketPC specific (like any calls to
aygshell.dll) then you will have issues, but most likely it will run as-is.
Obviously the UI size will likely change. The best thing to do is to simply
try it in the CE emulator.
 
There's no right answer to your question. If you are not P/Invoking any
APIs from your code and you haven't done anything which assumes a screen
size, it should work pretty well on either PPC 2003 or Windows CE.NET.

Paul T.
 
Heh, that's one problem i realized. How do I make VS display WinCE devices
as possible debug devices when debugging a PPC project?

/ Peter
 
There's no simple way. I've had some luck right clicking on the project in
the project explorer pane and chosing deploy, then choosing Windows CE
Device from the menu, but typically I just create a new project and use the
same source files.
 
Thanks for your reply Chris!

So if you would have handhelds of let's say 2 makes, and the first is PPC
and the second is CE .NET you would have problem if you developed the same
application for both of them?

Or... maybe you can reference to the same code files but use different
solutions and different projectfiles? Meaning any changes made to the code
would be reflected in both projects...

/ P
 
Correct, if you use 2 project files with the same source, you can easily
cross develop. If you keep in mind the UI and PPC library specifics,
there's no reason you can't make a single binary that can run on both
platforms, it's just that debugging on both is sometimes tough without 2
projects.

-Chris
 
Thanks a lot Chris!!

/ Peter


Chris Tacke said:
Correct, if you use 2 project files with the same source, you can easily
cross develop. If you keep in mind the UI and PPC library specifics,
there's no reason you can't make a single binary that can run on both
platforms, it's just that debugging on both is sometimes tough without 2
projects.

-Chris

runs
Click to expand...
 
Hello Again!

I have tried your suggestion now Chris. First I created a solution (Below is
the file structure that was created) , then I created a PPC Windows
Application. It has a single form1.cs file as it's source. I then created a
WinCE .NET project, deleted the form1.cs file and added the file from the
PPC project.

...\PPCWinCeCrossDevTest\"solution file here"
...\PPCWinCeCrossDevTest\PPCCrossDevTest\ "PPC files here"
...\PPCWinCeCrossDevTest\WinCECrossDevTest\ "WinCE files here"

1. As Visual Studio creates the project directories itself I don't know how
to add a source file to the project and NOT make a copy of it. In my example
when I add form1.cs to the WinCE project the file is simply copied to the
WinCE project folder and changes to one file is not reflected onto the
other. Is it possible to achieve this?

2. A simple thing like a mainmenu seems to make the GUI development between
the two "platforms" less obvious than you first think. The top-positioned
menu in WinCE is placed at position 0:0 and any controls added to the
designer should start from y-position = 0 + height of menu... This seems
odd, and is ofc not compliant with the PPC GUI development. Any controls
added to the top of the form are simply hidden by the menu when running in
WinCE...

Any ideas of how to solve these problems? There must be a number of
companies creating GUI applications for both PPC and WinCE that has
experienced this before...

thanks,

Peter
 
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