How to setup a free Windows-based development environment for Symbian OS

Question

Can I develop for the Symbian OS Emulator without buying an IDE? Are there any free tools I can use in order to write Symbian applications for a Symbian SDK without having to buy an IDE? How can I configure my system in order to use these tools?

Answer

Yes. Microsoft has published a set of free Windows development tools which can be used in combination with any Symbian OS SDK with WINS binaries in order to create Symbian OS applications using the Symbian command line build tools without the need for Visual Studio 6 or Visual Studio .NET to be installed.

The instructions to setup the development machine in order to perform this are the following:

1. Install a Symbian OS SDK which contains a WINS build.
2. Download and install the Microsoft .NET Software Development Kit,
3. Download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003,
4. Download and install the Microsoft Windows Platform SDK,
5. Modify your Windows PATH environment variable so that it points to the binary directory where (3) was installed, then the binary directory where (2) was installed and finally the binary directory where (4) was installed,
6. Go to the Symbian FAQ page where this tip was originally posted and download the fake BSCMAKE.EXE file to the bin directory of the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit installation directory. For the example of the installation described in (5) the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin\

For example, if the installation directories are:

• For (2) C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\
• For (3) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\
• For (4) C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\ Then the PATH environment variable should contain the following string before any other entries: PATH = C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\v1.1\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin\.;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin\WinNT;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin\Win64;

The BSC Make utility generates the information required by Visual Studio for browsing C++ classes and it is only available when Visual Studio is purchased. Because the Symbian build tools call this utility, the attached fake utility will ensure that the build process will not fail and no .BSC file will be generated. Developers who already have Visual Studio do not need to install this fake executable.

At the end of this procedure, the developer can use the Symbian OS command line build tools and create Symbian OS applications for the WINS UDEB/UREL versions of the Symbian Emulator as if Visual Studio was installed.