Wanted: Decent IDE

My latest effort on trying to make a flash lite client to musikServer did not turn out the way I wanted to. It turned out that flash lites playback of mp3s on the phone had a really crappy sound and as soon as it was out of focus (like when keylock kicks in or screensaver activates) it stopped playing. So I temporarily abandoned the project until flash lite has matured a bit.

What I really would like to talk about was the problems with making a flash lite swf into a SIS file and the lack of good development tools.

In order to make a SIS file out of the flash SWF, I had to install a app called Adobe Mobile Packager. OK, I installed it.

Not working...

It turned out that it required CAB SDK, Perl and S60 SDK. So I installed them all.

Still not working...

Turns out that S60 SDK required java, so I installed that.

Still not working...

Turns out I have the wrong Perl version, so I installed the right version.

Still not working...

Tried 2 more different versions of S60 SDK until I found out the right version that worked.

Seems to work, but the phone complains about certificate so I package the exact same thing again, and now it works.

After abandoning the whole project with flash lite, I decided to install Carbide C++ that is a IDE for developing C++ apps for symbian. Sure thing, Carbide downloaded and installed. Oh yeah, I also wanted to use some STL and boost since we use that in musikCube, so I had to install an extra SDK for that. So I started up carbide and created a standard "hello world" project from a tutorial. Without any changes I tried to build.

Lots of errors...

After 15 minutes of research it turned out that I again had the wrong Perl version, so I had to reinstall that again. New try to compile.

Some errors...

Hmm.. Some more research and it turns out that I have to have my project on the same drive I installed the S60 SDK on... Strange.. but anyhow, I moved it.

Still errors...

Tried to recreate some other of the project templates (basically different kind of "hello world" projects) and found one that compiled fine. So I started the project in the emulator.

Emulator hangs...

At this point I am VERY frustrated. Why can't anyone make a decent IDE that just works out of the box. Problems like this is the reason why developers give up trying to develop C++. Coding C++ isn't very hard, but setting up a IDE and getting things up and running is a pain and this is the reason why people turn to scripting languages.

Thoughts for phone client.

Thinking some more about the phone client I'm working on.

I've had an idea for quite some time to make a player on the phone that would play music in the same BPM as you are running in (or maybe a bit faster).

I noticed that in flash lite - at leased on my nokia -  I am able to read the accellerometer. This means that I would be able to determin the BPM you are running/walking in and choose track accordingly and with the BPM-analyzer plugin on the musikServer, this is perfect :) 

musikPhone?

So, what's going on with mC2?

I haven't had much time developing because of my current work has taken up all of my free time. But the last couple of days I've been playing around with flash lite and I've managed to connect to our musikServer using only flash lite on my Nokia N95. 

Flash lite actually got all the functionallity to use the musikServer: It's got XMLSockets for doing all the querying, and the abillity to stream mp3s (although other formats will not play). 

I also noticed that they are having a challenge both at http://www.callingallinnovators.com/flash.aspx and http://www.flashlitedeveloperchallenge.com/ that would be fun to participate in, and although I know it does not stand a chance to win because it requires a musikServer, it may generate some promotion.

I guess I should be converting mC2 to using QT instead of doing this, but it's not as fun :)