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Nokia Sharpens Carbide Bits With C++ RAD


By Edward J. Correia
September 15, 2006 — 
Developers targeting Symbian OS-based devices will soon have their very first RAD tool. On Sept. 18, Nokia is set to begin shipping versions of its Carbide.c++ IDE that include UI Designer, an all-new rapid application development environment for S60 phones. A version for UIQ-based phones is planned.

The company also has introduced E299 Developer and E1,299 Professional editions of Carbide.c++, feature-rich versions of the free Express edition it introduced earlier this year. All are based on Eclipse 3.1 and CDT 3.0.1.

According to Heikki Pora, senior product engineer at SysOpen Digia, a contract developer based in Finland, RAD tools such as Nokia’s have been all but nonexistent. “There haven’t been too many available for mobile [development], and especially not for Symbian. So it’s an important milestone for the industry. It’s something I’ve been waiting for.”

Pora started developing for Symbian more than six years ago, when it was called Epoch and was used on devices from Psion. “It has evolved quite a bit since then.”

At press time, Pora was using the third beta of the tool. “It’s been so stable that I started using it for production work,” which he said mostly involves integrating Symbian OS- and Linux-based mobile devices through middleware to SOA-based back-end systems. SysOpen Digia employs about 1,000 people, 500 of whom develop for the Symbian OS, he said. Pora also participated in development of Carbide’s new capabilities through beta-tester feedback. “For those who need [the UI Designer], it saves time.”

Mike Turjillo, product marketing manager for Nokia’s IDE solutions, said the new products move Nokia closer to its goal of unifying its development tools. “Before, they were a collection of tools from different languages and [with different] interfaces—not a unified development environment,” he said. “As we look at the mobile devices market getting bigger, it made sense to move toward the Eclipse framework.”

That strategy works for SysOpen Digia. “For me, that’s one great thing about Carbide,” said Pora. “We use an Eclipse-based [environment] for sever-side development, and now we can also use it for the mobile development.”

The Developer and Professional editions will occupy the middle of the planned lineup, Turjillo said, with the Express edition at the entry level. An OEM version for device creation is coming sometime next year.

Features common to all versions include those for building and debugging Symbian apps, Symbian OS emulation and importing projects. The Developer edition adds the S60 UI Designer and can import .INF files and perform on-device application and user thread debugging. To that, the Professional edition adds debugging of any thread, process, DLL, PDD or server, plus a postmortem debugger and CPU sampling profiler.

The UI Designer, which Turjillo said supports S60 2.1 through 3.0, permits developers to begin building device interfaces starting either with a wizard or a sample application. “You see design elements grouped in a palette. You drag and drop them into the left side. If you try to embed something in the wrong place, it will not let you and tell you why.”

Turjillo said that Nokia will ship versions of Carbide.c++ for Eclipse 3.2 early next year.


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