P.I.P.S. Architecture

P.I.P.S. provides an API layer above the native Symbian OS APIs that is more closely aligned with industry standard APIs.

The core P.I.P.S. libraries are

• libc: Standard C and POSIX APIs - includes support for files, sockets, pipes, message queues, shared memory APIs and environment variables

• libm: Standard C maths support APIs

• libpthread: Standard POSIX threading APIs

• libdl: Standard C dynamic loading and symbol lookup APIs (only ordinal lookup is supported on pre-Symbian OS v9.3 releases).

The first three libraries listed above are seeded from FreeBSD.

The diagram below shows the high level architecture of the P.I.P.S. environment.

This diagram shows how P.I.P.S. fits in with Symbian OS, and also how C/C++ applications, additional C shared libraries and hybrid applications developed by third party developers using P.I.P.S. fit in.

P.I.P.S. environment is based on industry-standard APIs. These standards include

• Standard C (stdC) and

• POSIX.

The P.I.P.S. environment is a mandatory part of Symbian OS v9.5 onward.

For devices already in the market, a SIS file is freely downloadable from the Symbian Developer Network (specifically http://developer.symbian.com/wiki/display/oe/P.I.P.S.+Home) and can be installed on any v9.x phone.