NLMakesis is a small utilities that improves the way Symbian OS Makesis works by adding two new capabilities for packaging your application with the possibility to:
  have SDK independent pkg file
  process your pkg file using the CPP preprocessor (thus ading macros and #ifdef, etc.... support to the original pkg syntax).

SDK Independent PKG file

A annoying features of the PKG file syntax is that, unless you mount drives to handle your development projects, the content of a PKG file is dependent of:
  the SDK you have used to compile your project if written like this:

  or the relative location of your project if written like that:

This is not very convenient when working on a single project with different SDKs,with people having different project directories or just when moving a project from one directory to another.

NLMakesis solves this by letting the makesis command know about your current SDK thus allowing you specify the files to include in your SIS file like this:

No more dependencies with the SDK or project directories location!

Preprocessor support

If you rename your PKG file with a .pkgp extension, then NLMakesis will send it to the CPP preprocessor along with any -D or -I parameters it found on the command line.

The result of the preprocessing will be stored with a .pkg extension and processed as a standard package file.

Syntax

With cpp preprocessing:

nlmakesis [-h] [-v] [-s] [-ppassword] [-Dmacro[=val]][-Iincludepath] pkgpfile [sisfile]

Normal mode:

nlmakesis [-h] [-v] [-s] [-p password] pkgfile [sisfile]

Download and Installation

Current version: v1.4

nlmakesis.zip

Download the zip file above, and unzip its content in the Symbian common tools directories which should be located in :

C:\Program Files\<Common Files>\Symbian\tools

Note that the Common Files directory name is dependant of your locale (will be "Fichiers Communs" if you have a french version of Windows, etc...).

Compatibility

NLMakesis has been tested successfully with most Symbian OS v7 and v8 SDKs.

MLMakesis requires an update in the makesis command to work with S60 v3 or UIQ 3 SDKs yet. You can download the updated makesis from UIQ Developer website or get a mirrored version here [1]. Note that the makesis.exe file shall be written in your <YourSDK>/epoc32/tools directory. Not the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symbian\tools one.

[1] Thanks to Marcus Groeber for pointing out the Symbian v9 makesis issue.