Dev Connection

Ed Burnette

BlackBerry embraces Eclipse

By Ed Burnette | March 18, 2008, 9:23pm PDT

Summary: Research In Motion (RIM) has joined the Eclipse Foundation and released a BlackBerry plug-in for Eclipse that provides the ability to develop and debug BlackBerry applications without leaving the familiar Eclipse environment. The announcement came Tuesday at the EclipseCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, CA. Until now, RIM’s development tool of choice has been a somewhat [...]

BlackBerry embraces Eclipse Research In Motion (RIM) has joined the Eclipse Foundation and released a BlackBerry plug-in for Eclipse that provides the ability to develop and debug BlackBerry applications without leaving the familiar Eclipse environment. The announcement came Tuesday at the EclipseCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, CA.

Until now, RIM’s development tool of choice has been a somewhat clunky home-grown IDE. When I tried my hand at BlackBerry programming a couple of years ago, that was my biggest complaint about the platform. But now, applications for BlackBerry, Android, Symbian, Palm, and iPhone (web) can all be created in the Eclipse environment. The only one missing is Windows Mobile.

BlackBerry plug-in for Eclipse

Early versions of the BlackBerry were programmed in C, similar to Nokia’s Symbian platform. Eventually RIM moved to an all-Java system that was based on J2ME with BlackBerry-specific extensions. This allows them to change the underlying architecture on the phones without having to recompile any existing applications. A similar strategy is used in Google’s Android.

A beta version of the BlackBerry Eclipse plug-in is available for immediate download.

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RIM BlackBerry, Eclipse, Handhelds, Java Development Tools, Open Source, Hardware, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Ed Burnette

Ed Burnette is a software industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience as a programmer, author, and speaker. He has written numerous technical articles and books, most recently "Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform" from the Pragmatic Programmers.

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Native PalmOS

Ed Burnette 25th Mar 2008

I'm referring to native Palm/Access development. Here are some references I dug up for you:

http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/displayarticle279.html

http://eclipsetracker.blogspot.com/2004/10/pods-overtakes-palmsource-ide.html

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/6584/palm-os-developer-suite-preview-available/

http://www.access-company.com/developers/documents/docs/dev_suite/PalmOSDevSuite/Tools_Eclipse.html

http://www.accessdevnet.com/index.php/ACCESS-Tools/View-category.html

http://www.access-company.com/news/press/ACCESS/2007/20070305_eclipsecon.html

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This ought to be good for ...

mwagner@... 19th Mar 2008

... those of us who love the BlackBerry but have to keep their old devices around for those applications which have not yet been ported to the BlackBerry. Maybe now, those vendors can re-compile their applications for the BB and we can finally reties all those old obsolete devices!

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Wouldn't hold my breath on Windows Mobile...

chas_2 19th Mar 2008

Microsoft loves pushing their Visual Studio solution which, in some respects, is better and more consistent than Eclipse. I've been using Eclipse to develop for the Palm platform and it's been a good, but not great platform. There are some bugs, and it's not as feature-rich as Visual Studio but it does work. And it's free.

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WM has it's own solution, a very good solution...

Narg 19th Mar 2008

Visual Studio is much better than Eclipse in so many ways, so I personally don't see any reason why it should be included.

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More Info on Palm

ebresie@... 24th Mar 2008

Just curious, it references Palm development...is the intent here to refer to the Java ME development or the pure Palm development? Any additional details on this would be appreciated.