[PythonCE] How do you develop on the PocketPC?

[Thomas Heller]

(Sorry for the late reply - sooo much to do ;-)

"Luke Dunstan" <coder_infidel at hotmail.com> writes:
> From: "Thomas Heller" <theller at python.net>
>
>> We have three more or less complete and tested rapi modules.  I have to
>> admit that after reading it I like Luke's module better than the
>> TechGame one, although I found at least one error in it (CeCreateProcess
>> must take a pointer to PROCESS_INFORMATION).
>
> Note that PROCESS_INFORMATION contains an "_as_parameter_" property
> that takes the address for you. I would agree to removing this though
> because it may be more confusing than convenient.

I totally forgot about the _as_parameter_ mechanism (even though it is
documented in the tutorial).  Problem with it is that it's not
compatible with argtypes, iirc.

>> We have the script that I posted which implements the start of a remote
>> Python interpreter.  I don't know what others think of it, but I find it
>> pretty cool, it lets me try out code on the PDA without having to fiddle
>> with this stick ;-).
>
> I forgot to mention it earlier but I am actually using your script most of
> the time instead of the default PythonCE shell :-).

Cool.

>> How should we proceed?
>>
>> Create a development environment for CE, based on ctypes?
>
> I think everyone will have different ideas of what a "development 
> environment for CE" should be, and a wiki page is probably a good way to 
> collect the ideas. It would also be nice if an existing IDE or something 
> could be modified and extended to allow remote development for Windows CE, 
> because it would save a lot of time compared to creating it from scratch. 
> Off the top of my head I would like an IDE with the following features:
>
> - Remote interactive Python shell like the one you posted
> - Source code editor with the usual features (to be elaborated later)
> - Integrated remote debugger like winpdb
> - GUI written in wxPython (this is just my preference and the reasons can be 
> discussed later)
> - Preferably doesn't require manual installation of device-side components 
> apart from the standard PythonCE, i.e. it should install the rest 
> automatically
> - Perhaps an integrated remote display function like ActiveSync Remote 
> Display or VNC, because this would be important for developing graphical 
> Python apps for Windows CE
>
> That should be enough to kick off discussion.

Ok, here are my thoughts in this:

I prefer xemacs as IDE, and normally do not use debuggers (ok, sometimes
pdb from the console).  I plan to extend the remote interactive shell to
accept all parameters that python.exe takes, then it could be used edit
the code script in xemacs, and execute it on the pda by hitting C-c C-c.
I also have already extended the remote console to be
configuration-free, the desktop's IP address is passed as parameter.
Later, the device-side script can be transferred automatically from the
desktop with rapi calls.

But this shouldn't discourage you from the above ideas - sounds great
anyway.

>> Where should the repository be?
>
> I think it should be part of the PythonCE project on SourceForge because I
> imagine it would appeal to most users and because I think it is too small to
> require a separate project at this stage.
>
>> Who is interested in developing it?
>
> I am interested in working on it but I will be going on holiday soon for 
> around 3 weeks, so I won't be available immediately.

>> Where should the repository be?
>>
>>
>
Brian Brown <brian at ablelinktech.com> writes:

> We can host it, I can create a trac project at http:// 
> www.techgame.net/projects/ceDev or something....
>
> Just let me know and I can set it up. It would have an svn repository.
>
>
>> Who is interested in developing it?
>>
>>
>
> We can contribute to the development, so who else wants to get on board?

So, it seems we have to decide whether the project should be hosted
inside the PythonCE project on SF, or a trac project on techgame.

And i seems Brian, Luke, and me would be interested as developers.  Not
a bad start, if you ask me.

Thomas