george williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I've been using gcc with a minimal emacs dev
> environment and it works fine. Are there
> any great reasons to move to a prettier dev
> solution like MetroWorks?
I've used MW extensively for Mac development but never for PalmOS...
but I understand that there are several things MW can't do. Somebody
please correct me if I'm wrong:
1) conditional compilation of resources. Debug builds of my apps
have a "Debug" menu; scrollbars are on the left side in left-handed
versions, etc. This is trivial with gcc/pilrc. Is it possible with
MW?
2) sharing of code between build environment and palm app. My current
"registration" scheme is to build on demand for each user. A hash
function computes a hash on the hotsync name at compile time, and the
hash is stored as a constant in the binary. The same code is compiled
into the app for runtime comparison with the user's hotsync name. I
can change the hash function arbitrarily without having to keep
anything in sync since make controls the whole process.
(This works because gcc is scriptable. MW wasn't for a while, but
that's been fixed in the latest version, right?)
3) Custom resources. I've heard, but can't quite believe, that you
can't get MW to build custom resources, e.g. tables for a state
machine. Again, this is trivial with gcc. But surely my source
needs more experience with MW.
If you're using or might use any of these features then stick with
gcc. Also stick with gcc if there's any chance you'll want to release
your source under GPL: you don't want to force anyone to spend $400 to
contribute to your project.
But there are also features that only MW has, right? Aren't there standard
UI resources (some types of tables, for example?) that pilrc doesn't know
about yet?
I'd also be curious to see a comparison of the quality of the code the
two environments generate. How good a job do they do of
dead-stripping unused functions? Anybody know this stuff?
--Eric House
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* From the desktop of: Eric House, [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Check out Crosswords for PalmOS: <http://www.peak.org/~fixin/xwords> *
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