Native Development

[Marker]

Hi,

I am from a C# Visual Studio background and have for a while been doing a few apps on AIR, but wondered if I should have gone the C++ way instead, since I already have experience with a few Win32 apps in VC++.

I was wondering if anyone could give me an advice on what IDE to use with C++?. I have been on Visual Studio since 6.0 and not sure what IDE would be the best to use doing C++ for Playbook - given the platform I come from?

[peter9477]

Try installing the Native SDK... it comes with a pretty good IDE. ;-)

[scraft]

Personally I use Visual Studio (2008, although I don't really use any features on PlayBook development that weren't available in 2003/2005/etc.) although it does take some extra work build system wise if you want to break out from the default IDE.

For debugging you have to use GDB, so either command line or via the Eclipse IDE that comes with the SDK.

Steve

[Marker]

Can you use the API with VS 2008? or are you using Marmalade with VS? Read somewhere that they had a working beta that could be used for Playbook development, but didn't find anything confirmed on the subject.

[scraft]

I don't think you can use VS 'out of the box' with PlayBook. I actually use a Jam based build system for all platforms, including PlayBook, and I have it integrated into VS, so all platforms I work with build under Visual Studio. As I say it does take some setting up, I am not sure I would goes from all the hoops purely just to use another IDE, however something like the Jam build system offers a lot more, especially when using lots of platforms.

Steve

[Marker]

Hi Pete,

Ya it is quite neat and have been trying it out and did some small test with 2D OpenGL etc. Wondered if there was an library where I could utilize UI components? like QT but could read that was not a good use in a Win environment. 

I would especially like to get my fingers onto File browse dialogue, ie like browseForOpen dialogue in AIR.

Is this IDE very much targeted game development? and not so much towards business app development? The open source api's and brief toturials looked like that to me.

[peter9477]

Marker, yes, very much targetted towards games for now. The major thing we're expecting (and it's in a closed beta right now) is the Cascades UI framework. This is something RIM's TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) acquisition is diligently working on in Sweden, and which we have high hopes for in this area. Googling would turn up various video "teases" if you're interested.

There's no clear timeline (another work in progress) but at DevCon last year they hoped to have the beta out by year's end and said final release in April. They may not be very far off that schedule.

[azazello]

since I use Qt library , QtCreator IDE suitable for main development, with exception for platform-specifica code, final build/debugging for playbook.  (unfortunately, Qt add-on for eclipse don't use a standart build configuration, so it's incompatible with QNX/Playbook add-on)

VS IDE+Qt add-on can be used by same way.

it's also possible to develop SDL and OpenGL_ES+EGL-based projects by same way.