WEC 7 : Build Solution performing a Buid & Sysgen

Using the CTP version of Windows Embedded Compact 7 available from the Microsoft Connect website (http://connect.microsoft.com), you will face a unexpected behavior of the development environment.

When building a solution using the Build menu, you will launch a Build and Sysgen (blddemo.bat) command instead of a Sysgen (blddemo -q) as it was the case in the previous version. This Build and Sysgen action is rebuilding the complete content of the $(_WINCEROOT)\Public folder, that is usually useful when you are making modification into this folder. In the case of the build of a runtime image, this step is not required and is increasing the build time.
As this action is not required, it is useful to avoid the execution of a such action. This can be done by modifying the blddemo.bat file located in $(_WINCEROOT)\PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\MISC and adding in the first lines :

If "%1"=="" goto :EOF

- Nicolas

Automaticaly Add files to an SDK - refreshed

When building an SDK using Platform Builder 6.0 (and previous), you may need to include your own files. Those files are the list of IOcontrols of drivers you implemented, or header files required to link to a new library that you want to provide in your SDK. In that case you have to include those files to your SDKs.
The first one is a manual inclusion of those files using the configuration wizard of the SDK. That’s mean that every time you generates the SDK you have to take care of those files.
The second solution is to automated this mechanism by copying those files to a specific folder that will be used automatically by the wizard during the generation of the SDK.


Identification of the sdk folder
The SDK tool uses the content of the cesysgen folder (located in your OSDesign folder), and the sdk folder located in the same folder as the cesysgen and OAK folder.$(_PROJECTROOT)\sdk or $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)
The SDK tool adds the content of the sdk\Inc and sdk\Lib folder to the SDK msi file. So you must store the files you need to provide with the SDK in those sub folders. Doing it manually is never the solution, so by asking the Windows embedded CE build environment to do it, it is more reliable. This could be done during the build of those libraries or drivers.


Add an automated task
Using the sources files you can add dependencies and enable automated task for the build engine. You could also use the postlink macro, but this is not the purpose of this article.
In the sources file add the following lines :

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# SDK files
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Enable copy to the SDK directory
WINCETARGETFILES=$(WINCETARGETFILES) CopyFilesToSDK

# Hearder files
SDK_H_FILES=gpio_iocontrol.h driverheadertoshare.h

#Lib files       
SDK_LIB_FILES=

Any target files that you specify using WINCETARGETFILES are added to the list of dependencies that must be satisfied to generate a successful build. Also by listing the files you need for your SDK in the SDK_ FILES variable, you will generate a list actions that will be solved later in the makefile.inc.


Add an automated copy instructions
In association to the SOURCES file you must provide a makefile.inc (located in the same folder), this file is proceeded after your sources files during the build. In this file you must satisfy the dependency list, so it must contain information about the CopyFilesToSDK.
Makefile.inc content will be the following :

#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!!!  Edit .\sources. if you want to include new files
# in the SDK.
#

CopyFilesToSDK:
  if not EXIST $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Inc mkdir $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Inc
   FOR  %%f IN ($(SDK_H_FILES)) DO xcopy /I /D /Q %%f $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Inc > nul

  if not EXIST $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Lib mkdir $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Lib\$(_CPUINDPATH)
   FOR %%f IN ($(SDK_LIB_FILES)) DO xcopy /I /D /Q $(_RELEASELIBDIR)\%%f $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Lib\$(_CPUINDPATH)\ > nul

The copy will be done in batch script language and executed by the build engine.
After the build of the driver or the library, you may find all your required files in the $(_PROJECTSDKROOT) folder.
In this article I described only one list of files to be proceeded, but it make sense to have two lists, one for the header files and the sdk\Inc folder and another one for the sdk\Lib folder for the libraries.

- Nicolas

How fun is Windows Embedded Standard 7

The last release of Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard, is based on Windows 7 operating system, and devices will come to the market in the next days. So Microsoft is demonstrating the capabilities of this Operating System in an Home Entertainment context.



- Nicolas

Awesome video of Windows Embedded Compact 7 running on TI OMAP based platform

Texas Instruments and Adeneo Embedded present during the last Computex event a PTI platform based on an OMAP 3530 processor running the next version of Microsoft Embedded operating system called Windows Embedded Compact 7.0 (WEC 7).



- Nicolas

2nd place : Phone Seven Competition

Adeneo Embedded and GoProd participated to the French Windows Phone 7 competition with WinMote application. With WinMote, you start all your medias on your PC from your Windows Phone 7. With this application, we get the 2nd place of the competition !

Check the video

- Nicolas

Develop a driver easily...

CEDriverWiz is a Windows Embedded CE wizard that works within the Visual Studio IDE, helps simplify the tasks needed to setup the initial subproject workspace to develop stream interface device driver for Windows CE 6.0.


Check out all the details about this nice project on CodePlex.

- Nicolas

Windows Embedded Standard 7 Compatible Applications

Most applications that run on Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP will run on Windows Embedded Standard 7. Through the use of templates, we now make it easy to ensure that all of your application development projects will run on Windows Embedded Standard 7. These templates allow an application developer to indicate which components should be included in the build in order to support their application on embedded systems.

Microsoft is providing for the most used applications, templates that you can use to integrate those apps in your runtime image. Check out the list here.
- Nicolas