I had forgotten...
...the challenges you will definitely face when developing applications for a PocketPC.
As you might have noticed, I don’t do much actual programming anymore working mostly as an architect or analyst. So when some of my colleagues started exploring VS2005, I decided it was time to catch up. A few years ago when the iPAQ was a real high-tech gadget, I build some demo’s using the eMbedded Visual Tools on my first iPAQ. So exploring CF 2.0 and the support for PocketPC development in VS2005 was the obvious choice for me.
Now, three evenings later, I’m starting to remember the challenging nature of PocketPC development. And I’m still trying to get over the first hurdle… getting everything configured and connect properly to be able to run and debug the really complex application “Hello World”. Less than 5 minutes, I hear you Win- or Web-developers think… dream on… device development works on a different time scale.
First I installed VS2005 on my Win2000 “R&D” machine… should be supported according to the system requirements. But my fantastic “HelloWorld” application won’t deploy on the device emulator… I get the message that the device emulator is not installed?!? Ok… next try… first deploy on my PocketPC… install latest version of ActiveSync (3.8)… won’t deploy… I get the message install latest version of ActiveSync?!!? Search for help… aha… it should be ActiveSync 4.0 beta (here)… why didn’t I think of that immediately. Ok… third time right… device connected… so far so good… deploying… unknown error… ggrrr etcetera.
I give up… at least for now… maybe my legacy operating system is the problem... so I try it again on my work laptop where I use Virtual PC’s for my R&D adventures… XP with VS2005. Now I have an emulator within an emulator… seems to be too much of a good thing… I get IP conflicts when starting the emulator. Search for help… follow configuration instructions found here … it works!!! But my victory is only short-lived when I read the small print… with this configuration the PocketPC will not be able to access the network resources… so I can’t get the connection to the internet working from the emulator… minor issue you would think… but I want to build an rss feed reader…