Native Development

[danjohnson]

Hello,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question (as it almost certain is) but I cannot for the life of me figure out how one actually goes about implementing the QNX Neutrino Utilities in a Blackberry 10 application.

I am referring specifically to those utilities that are listed in the API Reference alphabetically as simply "Utilities."

The documentation for them seems to be word for word taken from the QNX Neutrino documentation.  It seems they are run from some sort of command line, and I can't seem to find any example or documentation of how this is incorporated into a Blackberry application.  

Is the only way to access these utilities by building a BB application entirely from command line?  Are these even available for use in BB applications (like I said, the utilities documentation on BB's website doesn't seem to have been written by/for BB...)

The only thing I could find is http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Native-Development/wpa-cli/td-p/1717577 which did not give me much hope, but it was prior to the recent SDK release/update and is pretaining to playbook, not BB 10 SDK, so I am not sure if it is 100% applicable...

Thank you in advance for your help, and I apologize for such a vague question.

[peter9477 · Accepted solution]

I guess you're just exploring, and don't necessarily have a specific use case in mind?

I don't actually think those utilities are listed primarily for use within an app, but rather for use by developers in developing, troubleshooting, testing, or other such things.

In any case, if you needed to use one of them in an app, and were willing to tied your app to them even though there's probably no guarantee they will always be present on the device, there are several approaches.  The most direct one is to use the C library system() call.

[danjohnson]

peter9477, thank you very much for your reply.

For clarification:  When you say "there's probably no guarantee they will always be present on the device," do you mean that certain of the utilities API will stop being supported in future SDK updates?  

[peter9477]

I don't believe the utilities are necessarily considered officially supported parts of the SDK, at least in the sense of APIs. They're just tools that happen to be onboard. I could be wrong, but I've never seen any mention of them being supported, so I get the impression that any of them might disappear in any future update, though there may be a core set for which that's unlikely.

If I were to build an app based on them, I'd for now be prepared for them to be removed. Maybe I'm being too skittish about that... it's worth getting clarification though. New thread?

[BGmot]

Moreover even if these utilities exist on the device there is no guarantee that they will work from within your app. Try ping (or traceroute) they do not work because "permission denied"

[MSohm]

The Utilities section of the documentation is pretty much a straight pull over from the QNX Neutrino docs.  Unfortunately this means that not all entries apply for BlackBerry 10.  They will be cleaned up in the future, removing entries that you can't use.  For now consider these an experimental use at your own risk set of utilities.

[danjohnson]

Thank you Mark, I appreciate the info.

Related question for you: since the wpa-related utilities are up in the air, any new info about wifi APIs in general?  I.e. listing available networks, connecting to specific SSID, etc... Right now it seems very limited, but I don't see anything on the roadmap.

Thanks!

[MSohm]

The roadmap is all I can comment on at this point.

I encourage to to enter any feature requests that aren't on it in Issue Tracker:  https://www.blackberry.com/jira/secure/Dashboard.jspa

[danjohnson]

Well that issue tracker link has never worked any time I tried it;  Additionally, it appears BB is rolling out in a couple of months, and still no word on the above-mentioned functionality.  Are we to assume that it will not be there?  

[MSohm]

What works now should work on the final release, but again consider all of these items experimental.

Our documentation team is planning to update that list to trim it down to what is supported.