Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 Now Available

PalmSource has released Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0, designed to allow developers to create the next generation multimedia and wireless applications for ARM- and 68K-based Palm Powered devices.

The introduction of Palm OS Developer Suite enables developers to create mobile applications that run natively on ARM-based smartphones and mobile devices running Palm OS Cobalt.

Theis new tool includes an open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on Eclipse, originally developed by IBM. Eclipse is a commercial-quality IDE with several hundred plug-in tools that support major software languages including C, C++, Java, and COBOL.

PACE vs. Palm OS Protein

Developers have traditionally used Metrowerks CodeWarrior or command line tools to develop applications for Palm OS Garnet or previous versions of Palm OS. PalmSource has since developed and incorporated the Palm Application Compatibility Environment (PACE) into Palm OS Cobalt, designed to allow most existing 68K applications to be forward compatible and "just work" on Palm Powered devices running Palm OS Cobalt.

Although 68K applications have the advantage of running on a wide variety of Palm Powered devices, only Palm OS Protein applications -- ARM-native applications written using the new Palm OS Protein APIs -- can take advantage of the many new features introduced in Palm OS Cobalt. Palm OS Developer Suite is currently the only free toolchain available for the development of ARM-native, Palm OS Protein applications.

"Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 integrates all the various tools for project building, editing, compiling and debugging, making it easier to develop ARM-native applications for Palm OS," said Tim Norman, co-founder of NormSoft, creator of Pocket Tunes. "PalmSource has done a superb job documenting the changes since Palm OS 5 and have developed a great introduction to using the Palm OS Developer Suite and associated tools."

Registered Palm OS developers can download Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 free of charge from the PalmSource Developer Zone.

Related Links

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• PalmSource Takes the Wraps Off Palm OS Cobalt 6.1