Professional Windows® Embedded CE 6.0

Chapter 2. Development Environment and Tools

As part of the process in learning any new skill, the keys to mastering the skill quickly and effectively are knowing the available tools and resources to help perform a given task and then lots of practice.

In this chapter, I review the CE development tools and the installation process and where the OS components, utilities, and sample code are installed.

Windows Embedded CE Platform Builder

The tool used to develop the CE design and generate the custom OS runtime image is called the Platform Builder. In each of the previous releases of CE, the Platform Builder tool was the stand-alone tool dedicated to supporting CE-related development.

For the 6.0 release, the Platform Builder is a Visual Studio plug-in that requires VS2005 to run. The plug-in allows building BSPs, creating device drivers, building runtime images, and exporting SDKs to support application development.

In a typical CE development project, the Platform Builder within the VS2005 IDE is used to perform one or more of the following tasks:

• Develop the OS design and generate the OS runtime image from the OS design.

• Develop the device driver code and compile the device driver binary.

• Develop the programming library code and generate the programming library binary.

• Develop the application code and compile the application executable.

Throughout every CE development project, compiling and generating the binary for the device drivers and programming libraries, compiling the application ...