This is a question related to Get OS-Version in WinRT Metro App C# but not its duplicate.
Is there any option to detect from a Metro application whether there is the desktop feature available on the system? I understand that detection of the OS version is not supported and that is OK imo.
However my metro app needs to know whether there is a Desktop available on the system it is running on.
By Desktop I mean extendable desktop - desktop, where 3rd party desktop applications can be installed. As we know ARM based units will have the desktop too, but only with Microsoft built-in programs.
Can I distinguish whether my Metro app is running on a ARM based tablet with non-extendable desktop vs on all other (Intel based) devices with extendable desktop?
After some more extensive search I found GetNativeSystemInfo method. The hint was right away on SO site - this question. This approach seems to be fully supported by Windows Store applications - the App Cert Kit test ran smoothly despite the fact that pinvoke was used.
I ended up with the following code:
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
internal static extern void GetNativeSystemInfo(ref SystemInfo lpSystemInfo);
internal static bool IsArmBased()
{
var sysInfo = new SystemInfo();
GetNativeSystemInfo(ref sysInfo);
return sysInfo.wProcessorArchitecture == ProcessorArchitectureArm; //ushort 5
}
This seems to be as a solution I was looking for. Please tell me if not or make me aware of whatever problems connected to such an approach. Thank you.
If this is HTML, you can use window.cpuClass to get if it's ARM, x86 or amd64.
A non dynamic version is to use target specific architectures rather than AnyCPU, and then use the flavours with #ifdefs to hard code it at build time. You have to submit 3 packages to the store, however.
Use a try {} catch(){} to access those libraries, if anything goes wrong assume the ARM version.
Related
Since the VS C compiler has never done C99 very well I have always done my native code C development for desktop using a (terrible) port of gcc to windows. Anyway, I was wondering will WINRT's "native code" platform allow code from other compilers or will we need to use VS?
And when I say WINRT I mean the APIs not the OS... or at least I think I do... whatever metro apps want to call themselves now...
I just want to know if switching to metro development will be a good idea any time in the near future?
You do not need VS. But you do need a native compiler.
I need to develop a software which works for both windows and Mac OS.
The requirement are follows:
User can view flash file, make the selection and software print out the user selected flash file list.
I have experience in .net and windows platform but no experience in Mac OS. What is best development language and tool for my current situation.
I may be a bit biased on this, but you should use Qt because it will make your code portable on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and even some mobile platforms. I don't really understand your requirement but Qt is pretty much the all-round cross-platform solution. It's C++ based, but easy as such (no memory management hassle, Qt takes care of it all).
On one hand you could use Java, it's fully compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux, also the language is similar to C# so you could adapt without too much trouble, if you used .net with C#.
On the other hand you could use your knowledge in .net and use Mono. It's an open source library for running .net code in other platforms, It's not equal to .net (doesn't include all the libraries) but could solve your problem.
Hope my answer helps you.
Xojo is pretty easy to use and lets you make native Windows and Mac apps from a single source project so you might want to take a look at it.
Thanks to the gurus at StackOverflow. You guys are awesome. I posted on question on detecting idle time on a Compact framework application and got answers very quickly. When I tried the suggested solution on my Windows XP development box, I get this error
Unable to load DLL 'coredll.dll': The
specified module could not be found.
(On Windows XP)
After googling for sometime I understood that OpenNETCF libraries are trying to launch coredll.dll to detect the idle time but this dll is shiped with only Windows Mobile OS. As we are developing the application on a Windows XP PC and dont have access to Windows CE device now, we are struck with the problem.
Is there any way to get coredll.dll on Windows XP? Any other solution to this problem?
Updated: we are targeting the application for device running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional
I'm confused. The question was specifically about Compact Framework, which is for Windows CE. If you don't have your target hardware yet, then use an emulator.
In this specific case, the SDF is not P/Invoking to do this, it's using an IMessageFilter implementation. You could easily do the same for the desktop.
But that said, you simply can't develop a CF application targeting XP. What that means is that if you create your app using the full framework, targeting the desktop, and expect it to just run when you get your CE device, you're in for a big surprise. If targeting both OSes is a design goal, then there's a lot of work to be done, and most UI stuff is not transferrable (I'd actually recommend using different UI assemblies for the two targets and common business logic).
EDIT1
I guess to more fully answer the question of "can I get coredll.dll for my desktop?" the answer is a resounding "no". There are a multitude of reasons this wouldn't work (it's in ROM, it's hardware dependent, it's not actually a file, but fixed up to execute in place, it's compiled for a different OS, it may be compiled for a totally different processor, etc).
You have a couple options. You could try to create a desktop version of coredll.dll that exported all of the functions you want and proxies them to the kernel32, user32, etc DLLs. That's a boatload of work (been there, tried that).
You could try to write code that will work for both platforms. Doable, but also quite challenging.
The short of it is, unless you absolutely must target both, you don't want to try to. Get an emulator, virtual PC or some sort of eval system, and target that.
You can't run OpenNetCF in a Windows PC. You need to use a Windows CE emulator. This comes with the Windows CE SDK.
Write code that works for both platforms.
In our solution anything that is going to touch the platform is abstracted out to different objects. Therefore we have a IPlatformServices object (that returns stuff like IPowerManagement, IPrinter etc) we have two different implementations a PCPlatformServices and a CEPlatformServices and the one returned is based on the Environment.PlatformID value. In your scenario you want 2 different IdleDetector objects one for CE and one for Desktop. Aye its a bit of a pain to identify and abstract all this but you will need to do this is you want compatability between the two different platforms.
Our "PCPlatformServices" is mainly mocks in our case as we only want desktop compatibility to test things more quickly that don't interact with the hardware (like app code / business logic)
Greetings,
I want to write a small cross-platform utility program with GUI in it. What language/GUI-library should I stick to? Is it possible whatsoever?
This is gonna be a small program, so I don't want to make people download JVM or .NET Framework. Is it possible to develop it natively?
Update 1.
By "natively" I mean that the end result will be native code without intermediate layers like Java Virtual Machine or .NET Common Language Runtime
Update 2.
A FREE solution is preferable ;)
If you know C or C++ the first cross platform GUI framework I can think of are:
QT (C++, proprietary but free with the LGPL licensing)
wxWidgets (C++, the most complete and stable but also huge)
FLTK (C++)
FOX (C++)
IUP (C, simpler and cleaner than the ones above)
If you know Pascal, you can try freepascal+Lazarus. I've never used it, though.
The problem is: If you do not want to have a GUI but you do not want to ask the user to download an eternal API, Framework or virtual machine to run it in, be it TCL/TK, Java or QT etc. then you get lost pretty fast.
The reason is: You would have to rebuild all the (GUI) functionality those APIs, frameworks and virtual machines provide you with to be platform independent. And that's a whole lot of work to do... .
On the other side: The Java virtual machine is installed on nearly any operating system from scratch, why not give this one a shot?
You want to develop a cross-platform program natively? Uh...I don't think that'll work, mainly because that phrase is a paradox. If you write native code, it by its very nature will only run on the platform you programmed it for. ;-) That's what the Frameworks are all about.
So what you should do instead is use a very slim framework if your program is going to be so small. itsmatt's idea of Qt is a possibility.
WxWindows? Oh, it's called WxWidgets now: http://www.wxwidgets.org/
wxWidgets has bindings to all sorts of languages - python for instance, if your app is small enough.
Lazarus is great. GTK2 on Linux, win32/64 on Windows, WINCE on euh, Wince. It even uses Carbon on Mac (working on COCOA). Also easy to sell to your boss (the code is Delphi compatible)
How about Python using Qt or Wx and then using PythonToExe to make a 'distributable'
Thought will have to giving to the development to ensure that no native functionality is used (i.e. registry etc.) Also things like line breaks in text files will have different escape characters so will need to be handled
Which OS's do you have in mind when you say cross-platform?
As Epaga correctly points out, native and cross-platform are mutually exclusive. You can either write multiple versions that run natively on multiple platforms, or you need to use some cross-platform framework.
In the case of the cross-platform framework approach, there will always be extra installs required. For example, many here suggest using Python and one of its frameworks. This would necessitate instructing people to install python - and potentially the framework - first.
If you are aiming at Windows and OS X (and are prepared to experiment with alpha-release code for Linux if support for that OS is required), I'd highly recommend you take a look at using Adobe AIR for cross-platform GUI applications.
I agree with Georgi, Java is the way to go. With a bit of work, you can make your desktop application work as a Java applet too (so that users do not need to actively download anything at all). See http://www.geogebra.org as an example of an application with runs smoothly as a cross-platform Java application AND has a simple port to a web applet.
Two other advantages to using Java are:
They have extensive libraries for building the UI, including UI component builders.
The Java runtime framework is generally updated automatically for the user.
One disadvantage:
The version of Java installed on your end users computer may not be totally compatible with your application, requiring you to code to the lowest likely denominator.
Try RealBasic. Visual Basic-like syntax, targets Win32, OS X and Linux. I don't know any details about targetting Linux, but for any cross-platform development I've done between Win32 and OS X its been a dream.
http://www.realbasic.com
Edit: Generates native executables. There is a small cost - $100.
Have you looked at Qt?
Flash? It's installed pretty much everywhere.
If it "HAS" to be Desktop use Qt. Nothing beats it right now.
However personally I gave up on desktop and any UI based project I do is normally Browser/Server based. You can easily write a little custom server that listens to some port so the program can run locally with no need for your users to install Apache or have access to the net. I have a small Lua, Python and C++ framework I made for that purpose (Want to add Javascript for the backend with V8 :)
If you're going to look at Qt and WxWidgets, don't forget to also check out GTK+ !
I agree with David Wees and Georgi,
Java is cross-platformness par excellence. You literally write once and run everywhere. With no need of compiling your code for each target OS or bitness, no worries about linking against anything, etc.
Only thing is, as you pointed out, that a JRE must be installed, but it's quick and straightforward to do even for novice end-users (it's a matter of clicking "Next>" a few times in the installer).
And with Java Web Start deployment gets even easier: the user just clicks the launch button on a webpage and the application runs (if the proper JVM is installed according to what specified in the JNLP descriptor) or the user gets redirected to the Java download page (if no suitable JVM is found).
I was currently developing a desktop application in C# using mono and testing in SuSE and Windows. The concept doesn't matter much, but it is a "web lint" program that will scan a web site and return possible issues with security and/or cross browser compatibility. However, I want to be able to offer binaries for multiple platforms. Should I stay with Mono, or is there another platform that would give me a better availablility of platforms, such as on Macs, Windows, Linux, and others (possibly mobile platforms), and make it easier to port?
Well, your best bet always is to use a language that actually exists on all the platforms. That usually means Java, I think, though even perl has flavours for mobile platforms (depending on the mobile platform in question).
I do most of my cross-platform work in C and perl, but there are some headaches with C (lots of #ifdef's), and perl may not be on a mobile platform you care about (yet). You'll have to evaluate the languages/compilers/interpreters that are common to all the platforms you want to target and then choose from that list. Without knowing the full list of such platforms, we'll have a hard time telling you what to use, though Java has enough buzz-wordness to likely be a strong candidate.
Iff you know C++, Qt will cover many platforms.
C# and Mono is probably cross-platform enough for most desktop environments. The trick will be the "mobile platform" requirement.
Mobile operating systems are wildly diverse and there's not a lot you can do to generalize. Some have Java, like the Blackberry. C# may get you onto Windows Mobile-based platforms. iPhones do their own thing. You pretty much have to pick a platform and target that. That may end up informing your desktop platform choice.
Just stick to the Mono, make sure that you have Gendarme code inspector (FxCop for Mono) checking your code for portability issues, and you should be fine.
Java will run on Windows, Linux and Macs. Should be easy to transition from C# - use Apache HTTPClient for grabbing the web content you are scanning, and the scanning code should be more or less the same. However the downside is requiring the user to have the Java runtime installed.
Python is another option - you can build stand-alone executables for Windows, and it comes with most Linux distributions by default, and also Mac OS X (citation needed ;) ). This is a lot less hassle for Windows users (language is compiled into the executable, no other downloads required).
If mono runs on Mac OS X then surely that is a good platform as well?
It really depends what you want to do. For web development, if HTML/JavaScript is enough then stick with it. If you need more advanced stuff I would use ASP.NET with Mono (what you probably did) since you already know that. (You can use Visual Studio here.)
Another option might be (since you are a C# developer) to use Silverlight. That gives you Windows and Mac platforms covered and hopefully Moonlight will cover Linxu platform later. (You can use Visual Studio and Expression Blend here.)
If you need desktop application then Java is probably the easiest since you already know C#. But if you know C/C++ try to take a look at wxWidgets for example.
Why limit yourself to the traditional C#/Java? Have a look at Adobe AIR and Microsoft SilverLight