Best IDE for Palm OS devices

Question

Does anyone have experience with using a good quality IDE for Palm OS?

In particular I'm looking for the ability to compile small non-colour .prc files for roll out to older Palm III models (8MB).

Answer 1

I have always used CodeWarrior for Palm OS to write for older devices (not the Palm III exactly, but the m100 and similar models.) It hasn't been commercially available for some time, but it appears to be available for download at http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=0127260061788213D5 and I think from Palm's developer program too.

Answer 2

I was the lead developer for CodeWarrior for Palm OS for its last three releases, so I'm biased towards it. However, it was the main tool for professional developers and it had a very good 68K compiler, which is what you need to target the older Palm OS devices. Unfortunately, it's not available for sale anymore; Freescale has discontinued it, and the download link in the other post is just for the update patches, not for the full product. Sometimes you can find copies on eBay or other sites, and for the older devices, you can use CW for Palm OS V7 or V8 without any major problems.

ACCESS (who bought PalmSource) has a free IDE based on Eclipse that lets you build applications, and it's probably the best bet for now. It can be downloaded from their ACCESS Developer Network site. My big disappointment with it is that it uses the PRC-Tools 68K compiler which is based on a very old version of GCC. C++ support for 68K code isn't as good as CodeWarrior, but for C-based applications, it should work fine. I also don't really like Eclipse for C development, but that's a personal preference.

Finally, if you're not tied to C/C++ and want to look at other languages, I'd suggest NS Basic/Palm as a nice Visual Basic-like tool that targets the older Palm devices as well as current ones. I've used it for some small projects, and it gets the job done quickly. There's also a nice Delphi-like IDE called PocketStudio that's available from WinSoft.

Answer 3

Like @Ben said, take a look at NS Basic. It might be your easiest way to target older devices.

As far as I know, all of the tools from ACCESS are PalmOS 5 based, and targeted at ARM based processors instead of the Motorola CPUs from the Palm III days (even though the code is really compiled to 68k unless you make "armlets").

As far as IDE, CodeWarrior was it until the ARM based platforms and the free Eclipse-based development environments. Many developers at the time used the PRC-tools (myself included) and whatever editors worked best (emacs, vim, etc.). I don't know if you can still find the older PRC-tools with the correct headers & libraries if you wanted to go that route.

Answer 4

Not an IDE at all...but the Onboard Suit is pretty cool.

Onboard Suit

Otherwise I'd recommend CodeWarrior but it has been ages since I used it.

Answer 5

We use CodeWarrior. No disrespect to Ben, but Codewarrior really shows its age these days compared to a modern IDE. I haven't used the Eclipse stuff for any serious projects so I can't say how good it is. Seemed better than CW but I only poked around with it a bit.

Anyway, my point is I wouldn't wail and gnash your teeth if you can't find a copy of CodeWarrior.

[edit]

To elaborate, the two main problems with Codewarrior.

• No real command-line compiler. The command line just launches the GUI. This causes two big problems with build scripts. 1. If you are building multiple Palm projects forget about trying to get any work done while the build happens because the IDE keeps popping up, stealing input focus. 2. Errors go to the GUI, not to STDOUT.

• The UI is awkward and terrible, especially if you are working with multiple projects, say a couple of static libraries and a main project that uses them. Since a slick UI is pretty much the point of an IDE, well...

Answer 6

For a long time, I used CodeWarrior and then tried to switch to the Eclipse-based IDE. It was really disappointing, so much that I decided to go back to CodeWarrior. One bad thing I found was that the compiler is really old, and many modules wouldn't compile (especially when using some template constructs). Other issue is that with a managed C++ project (for automatic makefile generation) you lose so much flexibility that it's not a choice for many real projects; and maintaining the makefiles by hand is a pain.

I had many troubles when trying to debug PNOs in CodeWarrior, though, but as you stated that you want to generate pre-OS5 (68K) apps for older devices, CodeWarrior is a sure bet. It is really much more polished than ACCESS IDE.

As mhenry1384 stated, CodeWarrior is aging and for sure can't catch up with modern IDEs such as Eclipse for Java, Visual Studio or XCode, but ACCESS IDE is miles behind IMHO.

Answer 7

I've been able to write Palm code using gcc-68k and PRC-Tools. I wrote a couple articles on the Code Project that talk about how to get started. Part 1, Part 2. If you have any troubles obtaining the software mentioned, contact me from my profile and I'll help.

Of course, this is not an IDE. I was doing ok with the text editor + makefile approach and not having a great debugger. YMMV.

Answer 8

Recently found handheld basic which is a pretty decent VB styled IDE for Palm-OS. There is a freeware version which includes a start-up nag-screen on compiled applications.

Answer 9

Hello Jawad,

I've use the Handheld Basic that you can get the trial version here: http://www.handheld-basic.com/dl_try.php , but i'm trying the NSBasic, all this versions is Visual Basic like, and use the Visual Basic as the default language for development. Sorry about my english.

Answer 10

Some of the links provided by spoulson are out of date. Part 1 for instance is here.