Files and locations

The emulator maps the Symbian OS file system onto the file system on a PC. This drive mapping is performed at run-time. It enables the application to use the file system drives without interfering with the drives on the PC. In its usual configuration, the emulator has a drive z: that maps to the ROM of the target phone and a drive c:that represents the primary writable file system of the phone. More virtual drives can be added and standard drives can be reconfigured to map to alternative locations.

Emulator builds and other supporting data are located in the kit's epoc32\ directory.

The EXE of the emulator and other DLLs are in epoc32\release\<emulator-build>\<udeb or urel>where emulator-build signifies the compiler with which the emulator was built. This attribute will be winscw for Metrowerks CodeWarrior. Most development will use the debug build of the emulator in the udeb directory;the release build (not commonly used) is in the urel directory.

Drives z: and c: are mapped by default to sub-directories of epoc32\, as follows:

c: epoc32\<emulator-build>\c\ z: epoc32\release\<emulator-build>\udeb\z\ (debug) epoc32\release\<emulator-build>\urel\z\ (release)

Configuration files for the emulator are located in epoc32\data\. Its Emulator\ sub-directory saves dynamic settings for the emulator application. The z\ sub-directory stores target-neutral files to be included in ROMs or emulators. For example: fonts, bitmaps and resource files. The build tools always place copies of such files in this location.

In addition to c: and z:, the generic Symbian OS emulator maps some more drives. Emulators on licensee kits may have a different drive mapping to reflect the actual device being emulated. The default drives mappings are intended to make available a variety of file systems and drive types, as follows:

• U: FAT over emulated NAND flash drive.

• V: ROFS over emulated NAND flash drive.

• W: LFFS over emulated NOR flash drive.

• X: FAT over emulated MMC drive. For more details, see MultiMediaCard emulation.

• Y: FAT over emulated RAM drive.

These drives map to single files with extension .bin, by default in the epoc32\data\media\ directory. The configuration is set through the file Z:\SYS\DATA\ESTART.TXT (i.e. on the winscw udeb emulator epoc32\release\winscw\UDEB\Z\SYS\DATA\estart.txt). The licensees can supply a version of this file to configure drives appropriately for their device. The format is documented in DevKits in locationcedar\generic\base\documentation\Base_How_To_Estart.doc.

The emulator also:

• Provides a simple way for users to map additional drives to windows directories: For more details, seeHow to configure virtual drives.

• Maps the C: drive to a different Windows file location. See the command line -c flag in Emulator executable syntax: epoc.exe.

• Provides ways to control file access speeds, to better emulate slower drives. See Disk access speed.

Executables

An exception to the usual mapping is the directory where executables (all EXEs and DLLs) are located. These are present in the \sys\bin\ directory on the real phones and in udeb or urel directory on the emulator. For example: A program located on a real phone at locationz:\sys\bin\helloworld.exe is seen at location epoc32\release\winscw\udeb\helloworld.exe when built for the debug WINSCW target.

Program data files

Programs should normally store their data somewhere on the virtual c: drive. The exact location depends on the file location conventions of the phone and of the program.

Note

Unlike executable code, the data files are identical on a real Symbian OS phone and on an emulator and therefore can be copied between the two.

For more details on file system layout seeSymbian OS v9.0 and beyondtable.