Developing WM 5 Applications Without Visual Studio 2005

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://pluralsight.com/blogs/jimw/archive/2006/02/02/18535.aspx' target='_blank'>http://pluralsight.com/blogs/jimw/a...2/02/18535.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"For most of the life of Windows Mobile, their were two primary development tools, eMbedded Visual C/C++ (eVC) and eMbedded Visual Basic (eVB). With both of these tools being free, a significant number of hobbyist developers began developing Windows Mobile applications. In fact many of the more innovative Windows Mobile applications &amp; utilities have come from people who develop software as a hobby. Back in 2003 when the .NET Compact framework was first released, it was only available as part of a Visual Studio 2003. Not only was VS2003 not free but it was rather expensive. This of course made the .NET Compact framework inaccessible to hobbyist developers. With .NET-related technologies so obviously being the future of Microsoft development, many hobbyists were concerned that they were being left behind. Thankfully, the problem has been corrected."</i><br /><br />A nice little write-up on developing for Windows Mobile 5 without using Visual Studio 2005. For those of us without big company support and are moderatly interested in development, this can be a godsend. Happy coding!

[burtcom]

This is great news!

I've been compiling C# "for free" on the device using Pocket CSharp -- a decent compiler but limited to Compact Framework 1.X (and the guy who created it can no longer be found.)

I'm assuming that this SDK supports Compact Framework 2.X -- I'll soon find out...

[burtcom]

Yes, so far so good.

I created a helloworld EXE that runs both on the desktop and on the device :-)

Might be some issues with library paths containing spaces -- I couldn't get a compile to work till I made a spaceless path to the DLLs.

[NeilE]

Just so folks are aware, we made a major change this time around with the pricing for smart device development. With Visual Studio 2005 you now only need to buy the Standard edition, rather than Professional. Pricing is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/default.aspx. In USD, it's $199 for an upgrade or $299 for full version.

Neil

[Glohamar]

This is great. Now, where did I put those .Net books......

[Mark from Canada]

&lt;RANT> ...and of course there is no program to convert eVB to VS code...and no WM5 device runs programs made with eVB.
So - who wants to re-create all their programs - hands up please... :evil: &lt;/RANT>