[rfk-dev] rfk-palm release

[B Spitznagel]

--- "Peter A. Peterson II" <pedro@flynn.zork.net> wrote:
> Quoting B Spitznagel:
> > The "robotfindskitten for PalmOS" executable and source is on sourceforge
> > in the File Releases now.  I stuck it in the release that had files
> > (MonkeyMaster Autoconf Remix).. if this is a wrong thing we can remove it
> and
> > add it to a different release.
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> What is the process for building palm binaries? What tools do I need?

The process is "install a whole pile of stuff" and "make" ;-)

You need PRC-Tools 2.0 (a gcc based cross-compiler), any reasonably current
version of PilRC (generates the binary UI resource files from a human-readable
resource script file), and the PalmOS SDK (software development kit: header
files and stuff).  The SDK comes in version numbers corresponding to the PalmOS
version numbers, so these days 3.5 is the default sdk.. if you install the
PRC-Tools as an RPM or Debian-thingy it might include the sdk already; I
compiled the tools from source a while ago so I'm not sure.
The 'official' page for PRC-Tools acquisition is
  http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/tools/gcc/

If you plan to be building and testing applications of questionable stability
you will also want an emulator to run them in (so that you don't have to
maybe crash your own PalmOS device, or at least not so often).  The current
emulator of choice is POSE.  The emulator will need a ROM image to run.  The
easiest way to get a collection of ROM images is to download them from
palmos.com after clicking through a bunch of agreements and being semi-
automatically "approved".  (If you have a PalmOS device it is also possible
to download a ROM image directly from it, which may be faster, but requires
more effort and you don't get that variety-pack feeling.)
The official page for POSE and ROM acquisition is
  http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/tools/emulator/

There's also a sort of how-to page at   
http://www.netmeister.org/palm/POSE/POSE-HOWTO.html
that covers getting POSE and all the PRC-Tools-related jive, with the caveat
that he is using the old version of PRC-Tools in the hello world example
(trendier people use m68k-palmos-gcc not m68k-palmos-coff-<foo>).

If you have prc-tools, pilrc, and the 3.5 sdk installed, theoretically the
rfk-palm Makefile will work.  (If you're using an older sdk, Palm occasionally
renames things such as API calls and header files, so some tweaking of -Dfoo
would be required in the makefile to ifdef the right #includes into existence,
etc.  Also, I assume that packages would not tend to have this problem, but
when
I upgraded to the 3.5 SDK, the sdk had a fun new directory structure resulting
in inability of my crosscompiler to actually find that version's header files
at first.)  If you experience an unreasonable degree of pain let me know and
I will see if I have forgotten a step or something.

-Bridget


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