News
Nokia Offers Eclipse-Based Tools for Symbian
- By John K. Waters
- November 1, 2005
What's the biggest stumbling block for the Symbian device OS? According to
D’arcy Salzmann, senior product and tools partners manager at Nokia, it's
the lack of a coherent tools story.
Nokia is rewriting that story with the release of a new line of commercially
available Symbian developer tools built on the open-source Eclipse framework.
Dubbed Carbide.c++, it pulls together Nokia’s tools into a tiered family
of products designed, as Nokia puts it, to "offer flexibility to developers
at all levels and in all segments of the Symbian ecosystem, from professionals
needing powerful debugging support for hardware creation to the novice seeking
entry-level access to Symbian application development."
The announcement comes hot on the heels of news of Nokia’s decision to
join the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and board member. The mobicom
will serve as lead in the Eclipse Foundation's new Mobile Java Tools Project
(MJT), the purpose of which is to create a framework for mobile Java developer
tools, including complete tooling support for J2ME.
But as the EF's executive director, Mike Milinkovich, is often heard to say,
Eclipse isn't just about Java. Salzmann couldn't agree more.
"This is a logical follow-on from that announcement," he says. "We
intend to use assets from the Eclipse Foundation to build commercial tools for
C++. The Symbian OS is written in C++, and the native applications that target
that OS are also written in C++. It shows the flexibility of the Eclipse assets--that
a company like Nokia can take the base IDE, add in specific technology that
is unique and that we own—in this case it’s debugging and compilation
technology for C++—and bring commercial tools to market based on Eclipse.
It shows the breadth of the Eclipse offering--that you can build open-source
tools and contribute to an open-source community, and still build commercial
tools."
Launced at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London in October, The Carbide.c++
product line includes:
- Carbide.c++ Professional Edition, designed for professional Symbian OS
developers who focus on Symbian device development and high-performance applications
and require early access to next-generation Symbian OS support and technical
specifications
- Carbide.c++ Developer Edition, offering a new graphical Rapid Application
Development tool to ease C++ development for both Series 60 and UIQ mobile
platforms, meeting the requirements of advanced-level application developers
by providing improved productivity tools for application development and debugging
on Symbian OS devices
- Carbide.c++ Express, an entry-level tool available for download at no cost
to invite all programmers to explore Symbian OS, providing a complete set
of application development tools needed to target the Series 60 and UIQ SDKs
and to build and deploy applications to devices
“We’re the logical candidate to invest in development tools for
the Symbian OS, because we’re the largest manufacturer shipping devices
based on Symbian,” Salzmann says. “The way we see this market, the
rising tide of Symbian OS devices will lift all boats, including ours. The success
of an application on any of Symbian-based devices is going to be a win for all
of us with a stake in the success of Symbian OS.”
For more information, go to Nokia.
Or go to the home of Nokia's global developer program, Forum
Nokia.
About the Author
John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached
at [email protected].