Are there any tools/ ant tasks that could be integrated into the ant build file to build Symbian applications? Similar to what we have for Android (AndroidAnt), BlackBerry (BB Ant Tools), .NET (Nant)
+2
A:
There isn't any officially supported stuff as far as I know, but (having done it myself) I know it is perfectly possible to build Symbian apps using Ant by simply calling the command line tools from ant commands.
If this is a precursor to automatically building symbian apps using a build server of some description, remember that Symbian builds have an annoying habit of polluting the build environment so you will need to invest some time into automated environment cleaning and environment setup.
workmad3
2009-10-20 09:46:40
+1 Thanks for the info on Symbian's annoying habit of polluting the build environment :). Need to do some research on it.
Ram
2009-10-20 10:57:35
Symbian is a pain for that... you should also be aware that building for multiple symbian platforms is a real pain as the build tools expect certain environment variables and also registry values set up for their use... awful awful environment for automated tools :(
workmad3
2009-10-20 11:46:07
I thought it was pretty easy to switch platforms with the 'devices' command. http://www.newlc.com/Use-of-the-devices-command.html
tonylo
2009-10-20 12:05:25
It's supposed to be easy... it frequently isn't, especially if you're trying to do it all in a nice, automated fashion.
workmad3
2009-10-20 12:24:44
A:
This article is a good starting point: Continuous integration on Symbian OS
However, it doesn't cover the 'polluting the build environment' problem, which is an important one. In-house, we have fully automated Symbian builds using ANT and Cruisecontrol. We get around this problem by deleting/expanding the entire epoc32 tree with each build. This approach is fool-proof, but makes the builds very time consuming, which kills some of the benefits of continuous integration....
KevinD
2010-01-04 09:06:34