Native Development

[MrProsser]

I am very new mobile development and ever newer to developing for Blackberry devices so I am feeling a bit lost right now. I have a PlayBook and downloaded the Native SDK for it and have been playing around a bit, however I also want to look into BB10 development. Do I have to download the Native SDK for BB10 and install it in parallel with the tablet SDK? Will this result in having two Momentics installations as well? Is there a better solution?

[SerproApps]

If you want to develop for BB10, you need to download the SDK. No problem with that you have 2 SDK installed.

[MrProsser]

Thanks, but isn't it quite a waste of space to install the IDE twice when doing this? Does each version have customizations for either Playbook or BB 10?

[SerproApps]

Each SDK has its own characteristics. I do recommend using only the SDK BB10, since in the future the BB Playbook will be updated BB10.

[MrProsser]

This would be ideal and what I had hoped to do but I have not been able to get the either of the simulators working properly so in order to test anything I have to use my actual Playbook. I tried getting the BB 10 sim working today and was hoping I could simply get rid of the Playbook SDK but no such luck. I am using an older, small netbook for this and it seems to play poorly with both VMWare and the sims themselves.

[SerproApps]

You can start developing your app with the Tablet OS SDK, and when you can begin to port their app to BB10, I do not think you have to make many changes

PS: Sorry for my english, I use a translator

[MrProsser]

I hope both OS are similar enough that it will not be difficult to do that. I am just learning now anyway.

No problem about the English. I am learning Japanese and know how difficult it is when I try to write in the language.

[SerproApps]

Welcome then to the world of BlackBerry development, I specialize more in HTML5. If you have any questions, I'm here to help

[taylor-tomt]

Right now, to develop for the playbook, you have to use the NDK for OS 2.1. If you try to load an app built using the NDK for OS10 onto your OS2.1 PB, it will fail.

PB will be converted to OS 10, but not until some time after the launch of the new BB10 phones (or BB!0 phones (c) ), so OS2.1 will be with us at least for a few more months.

Porting your code from OS 2.1 NDK, to OS 10 NDK is almost a no brainer. There is one difference I know about when it comes to displaying Alert dialogs. You have to add a couple of lines of code to the bbutil library to allow the Alerts to display properly. There may be other issues, but I am not aware of them at the moment.

To speed up the simulator, access your PC BBIOS and enable 'virtualization' if your PC supports it. It makes a HUGE difference.

Make sure you are using the right simulator with the right NDK. I use the OS10 simulator for OS10 NDK (obviously), and I use my actual PB for OS2.1 NDK and don't bother with the simulator. You have to register for signing keys to enable loading your development apps onto your PB.

There are several other threads here about getting the OS10 simulator to run. Check them out if you're still having trouble.

[BGmot]

Right now NDK 10 allows you to build for either Playbook or BB10.