{"id":340,"date":"2010-07-14T11:50:42","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/?p=340"},"modified":"2010-08-13T11:13:20","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T17:13:20","slug":"porting-to-palm-webos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/14\/porting-to-palm-webos\/","title":{"rendered":"Porting to Palm \/ WebOS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just completed and submitted my port of Galcon to the Palm. The entire process took 2.5 days. Here’s my play-by-play of the porting process. A huge thanks goes out to Mike Kasprzak<\/a> for hand-holding me through the process and co-writing this post. \u00a0If you’re doing a Palm port, be sure to read the whole blog post over before you begin so you get the big picture. \u00a0Also, not everything is exactly in the right order, so that’ll give you the birds-eye view.<\/p>\n

Day 1: Preparing the device for Development<\/h2>\n

11:00<\/p>\n

– Unbox the Palm Pre Plus.<\/p>\n

– Figure out how to plug in the USB. \u00a0This is a bit tricky, you gotta really yank on that plastic tab on the side to get it off.<\/p>\n

11:30<\/p>\n

– Use WebOS Doctor to flash the device with latest OS<\/p>\n

http:\/\/ws.palm.com\/webosdoctor\/sorry.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

12:00<\/p>\n

– Activate phone. \u00a0If your phone isn’t activated, you use a program that can bypass activation<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developer.palm.com\/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2051&Itemid=30<\/a><\/p>\n

12:15<\/p>\n

– Connected to local WiFi on activated device<\/p>\n

12:30<\/p>\n

– Final preparation of the device for development.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developer.palm.com\/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1973&Itemid=336<\/a><\/p>\n

“Card view” is the view where you can see a view of all the open apps minimized. Apps are called Cards.<\/p>\n

12:45<\/p>\n

– ssh onto the device, password is blank<\/p>\n

$ ssh -oPort=10022 root@localhost
\nroot@localhost’s password:
\nroot@palm-webos-device:\/var\/home\/root#<\/p>\n

1:00<\/p>\n

– Install the Palm SDK and PDK, read whole document so you know where the cross-compiling binaries are located. It varies depending on windows \/ mac.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developer.palm.com\/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1970&Itemid=335<\/a><\/p>\n

1:30<\/p>\n

– Install a SSH key. \u00a0This way I don’t have to keep pressing return on the password entry during SSH sessions.<\/p>\n

$ pdk-ssh-init localhost:10022<\/p>\n

1:45<\/p>\n

– Verify installation by using a Palm demo app. \u00a0This is an important step! \u00a0This step shows you where the example code and scripts are and you’ll be referring to those when you build your own build\/deploy\/packaging scripts for your own app. \u00a0And if it works, you know your Palm is ready to go!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developer.palm.com\/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1974&Itemid=336<\/a><\/p>\n

– Errors about not finding various .so files can be ignored<\/p>\n

– [This should be irrelevant<\/strong> as Palm gets their SDK’s and firmware all synced across the networks] The PDL_Init error is actually the device talking back to you. \u00a0I had to go into the src folder and comment out PDL_Init to get it to run. This error is due to the 1.4.1.1 firmware on my Palm Pre Plus .. 1.4.5 is required for apps. \u00a0Had to do some hacks to get around this, won’t bother explaining, as this shouldn’t matter in a few days.]<\/p>\n

3:00<\/p>\n

– Rebuild simple sample app with PDL_Init included, works fine<\/p>\n

3:30<\/p>\n

– Got a copy of Mike’s app and tried it out. \u00a0Works nicely.<\/p>\n

Day 2: Porting the App<\/h2>\n

– 10:30<\/p>\n

Hacking up the \/opt\/PalmPDK\/share\/samplecode\/simple\/mac example building, packaging and deployment scripts. \u00a0Mostly just getting them to work with my code. \u00a0Was pretty straightforward if you know shell stuff. \u00a0I’m doing my work on the Mac, so I have a bash shell at hand all the time.<\/p>\n

– 11:30<\/p>\n

Got it compiling with a few tweaks. using rsync over ssh to deploy my game \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0I’m a big fan of rsync. \u00a0Here’s my “deploy” script:<\/p>\n

rsync -v -urt –exclude ‘*~’ –exclude tmp –exclude .svn -e “ssh -oPort=10022” .\/out\/ root@localhost:\/media\/internal\/galcon<\/p>\n

– 12:00<\/p>\n

I had trouble loading images to textures. \u00a0But this was mostly due to my own dumbness. \u00a0Ended up being really straightforward. \u00a0Used SDL_image to load, converted it to 32 bit, then loaded it in.<\/p>\n

– 1:30<\/p>\n

.mp3’s won’t play with SDL_Mixer, so you must use oggs instead, check out this hack that I use to covert my “.mp3” extensions to “.ogg”:<\/p>\n

sprintf(f,”%s\/%s”,DRIVER_DATADIR,fname);
\nint l = strlen(f);f[l-3]=’o’;f[l-2]=’g’;f[l-1]=’g’;<\/p>\n

– 1:45<\/p>\n

SDL keyboard events not passing numbers when I use the Palm number presser key.<\/p>\n

This is a palm bug, I should file a bug report. If the user holds down the NUMBER key, and then pressed a letter, they get the proper number.<\/p>\n

-5:30<\/p>\n

Handled SDL_ACTIVEEVENT to switch game into pause mode when being minimized.
\nif ((e.active.state&SDL_APPACTIVE)!=0 && e.active.gain == 0) { \/* pause game *\/ }<\/p>\n

– 6:00<\/p>\n

Added a few PDL_ calls. \u00a0I’m really liking the set of lightweight functions they give you. \u00a0They cover most all the stuff you need for game integration in just a few calls.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developer.palm.com\/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1990&Itemid=340<\/a><\/p>\n

#include “PDL.h”<\/p>\n

PDL_Init(0); \/\/ in init function
\nPDL_GetCallingPath(char *buffer, int bufferLen); \/\/ to find out where our app is being launched from so i can find my data files
\nPDL_GetDataFilePath(char *dataFileName, char *buffer, int bufferLen); \/\/ find out where my app can write save games and settings.. the buffer is a fullpath to where we can save a file to
\nPDL_LaunchBrowser(const char* Url); \/\/ go to interwebs
\nPDL_Quit(); \/\/ wrap it up<\/p>\n

Here are a few tips from Mike that I found really helpful:<\/p>\n

About the Palm itself:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n