How to manage development for multiple device types

A single development machine can have multiple Symbian OS development kits installed. The devices command allows you to specify which Symbian OS device to develop for, and configures the required environment settings according. The command was introduced at v7.0. You need to set a device using the commands explained below in order to use the build and other tools.

A single kit can itself have an emulator and tools for more than one type of Symbian OS phone\device. A device in a particular kit can therefore be fully specified with an identifier in the form kitname:devicename. You can get a list of all the installed devices by just using the devices command without any switches.

Because the kitname:devicename form can be quite long, the devices command, for convenience, also allows you to choose an alias name for the device.

There are a number of levels at which you can set the device that you want to work with.

• default: the default device is assumed for the current session, and for all new sessions, unless you specify otherwise. To set the default device, use the command:

  > devices -setdefault @device-identifier

• per session override: you can change the device used in a particular Windows Command Prompt session by setting in that session the environment variable EPOCDEVICE to the device to use, i.e.

  > set EPOCDEVICE=device-identifier

• per command override: you can override both the default and per session setting for a particular command by specifying the device (prefixed by an @ character) as part of the normal command parameters. For example,

  > bldmake bldfiles @device-identifier

Example

The following command-line session:

• lists the available devices

• creates an alias tview for the device os7.00604:com.symbian.techview

• sets the default device to be tview

• displays the default device (confirming what has just been set)

C:\>devices
os7.00604:com.symbian.techview
C:\>devices -setalias tview @os7.00604:com.symbian.techview
C:\>devices -setdefault @tview
C:\>devices -default
Default device: os7.00604:com.symbian.techview (alias tview)

EPOCROOT compatibility

Previous to v7.0, the active development kit was set by the user setting the environment variable EPOCROOT. You no longer have to do this: EPOCROOT is set automatically, based on the default device setting and any specified overrides.

If EPOCROOT is set by the user, the tools stub will not override it with the default device's EPOCROOT setting. However, the tools stub will continue to use the default device to locate the tool. If the user wishes to override the current device, they can use the EPOCDEVICE environment variable, or specify the device name (or alias) on each command in the form of an '@device' parameter.

Use with pre-v7.0 kits

Only v7.0 and later kits automatically update the device list when they are installed. If you also want to use the devices command to manage earlier kits, you can add them to the list yourself using the command devices -add, specifying the location of the kit's epoc32\ (the directory that contains the release\ sub-directory) and epoc32\tools\ directories.

For example, the following command adds a v6.0 SDK which has its epoc32 tree at C:\symbian\6.0\nokiacpp\, and its epoc32\tools tree at C:\symbian\6.0\shared\.

> devices -add C:\symbian\6.0\nokiacpp\ C:\symbian\6.0\shared\ @v60:com.nokia.cpp

The device identifier (here v60:com.nokia.cpp) should be descriptive of the kit, but doesn't have to correspond to a particular directory name.

Use of the devices command is supported for all kits from v6.0.

Use with Metrowerks CodeWarrior

CodeWarrior is aware of the devices information, and will query you at appropriate times for the device kit to use. Note that in order for CodeWarrior to detect the device, the device-name part of the identifier must be of the form com.name.name.