Programming under MS Windows CE with STLport

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This is supposed to give an overview for programming on MS Windows CE, with and

partially without STLport, what tools are available and what common pitfalls

exist. Note that for every supported compiler there is another readme file which

explains the specifics of that compiler.

Available compilers:

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- Embedded Visual C++ 3 (eVC3): this IDE/compiler is for the CE3 target platforms.

The included compiler is MSC12, the same as for VC6, so many workarounds for its

'features' apply here, too. STLport works out of the box with this.

- Embedded Visual C++ 4 (eVC4): basically the same as eVC3, but it can compile for

CE4.x and 5. Note that currently (2007-03-06) I haven't tested this with CE5,

because you can use a better compiler using VC8/VS2005. This compiler can be

downloaded for free from the MS website, including a product activation key.

STLport works out of the box with this.

- Visual C++ 8 (VC8) aka Visual Studio 2005 (VS2005): with this version (and

partially already version 7) the embedded and desktop IDEs have been merged again,

so it supports compiling for MS Windows CE, versions 5 and later. Note that the

freely downloadable express edition does not(!) allow compiling for CE. This IDE

uses MSC14 as compiler. STLport works out of the box with CE5.

- Platform Builders (PB): this tool is used to create a CE image. You can select the

modules (e.g. Explorer, but also C++ RTTI) you include in the image. These IDEs use

several different compilers (MSC12-14). STLport hasn't been tested with this

IDE, AFAIK.

- There used to be an addon for VC6(?) that allowed compiling for CE. This plugin

has been superceeded by eVC3/4 and support for it has been removed from STLport in

version 5.

- Others: some vendors (e.g. Intel) provide compilers that are able to generate

CE executables. I'm not aware of an attempt to compile STLport with them.

Environment specialties:

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- In order to develop for a platform, the first thing you need is a so-called SDK.

This package includes headers and libraries that (more or less) resemble the APIs

available on the device. The IDEs come with a basic selection of SDKs, but in

general you need to retrieve an according SDK from the vendor. If you are the

vendor, you can generate an SDK for a platform with Platform Builder.

- The provided API is typically a subset of the 'normal' win32 API. Often, some

features are simply not supported, like security descriptors when opening files.

Also, these APIs are only supported for wchar_t strings, e.g. only CreateFileW()

and not CreateFileA().

- CE doesn't have a current directory, hence no relative paths to that dir. You can 

have relative parts in global paths though.

- CE doesn't have environment variables, thus STLport can't support e.g.

setenv/getenv. It also doesn't attempt to provide workarounds.

- Since many features are optional (see the description of Platform Builder), it

is possible that you don't have e.g. a console that std::cout could write to. The

same applies to exceptions (see e.g. the add-on lib for RTTI for eVC4). Other

features might go amiss, too. This makes it hard for STLport to adapt to, in

particular because this information is not available outside PB, a header might

declare a function that in fact is not present. Keep this in mind when you get

linker errors.

- The supplied C++ standard library is extremely cut down, e.g. iostreams and

locales are missing completely.

- The supplied standard C API is at best rudimentary. Functions like e.g. time() or

clock() are declared but not defined. STLport doesn't include any workarounds for

these missing functions at present.

- All compilers are cross-compilers, i.e. you run them on a win32 host and they

produce executable code for the target platform. The same applies to the debugger,

which is connected via serial, USB or ethernet. Alternatively, there are emulators

that run on the host machine and simulate the target platform.

- The entrypoint for executables is generally WinMain. Normally, you would have

switched to a normal main() using /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE on the linker commandline.

The linkers for at least CE4 and 5 don't understand this switch, they claim it

conflicts with CE targets. Instead, set the entrypoint directly to 

mainACRTStartup.

- The name of a DLL loaded via an import library can't be longer than 32 chars. If

this is not the case, the application will behave as if the DLL was not present or

couldn't be loaded for whatever other reason. This limitation applies to at least

CE 4 and 5.