Symbian platform port

Chris Double squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Sun Sep 29 06:23:38 UTC 2002


Thanks for the pointer to the code Tim, I've downloaded it and will
take a look. Hopefully it'll help towards a Symbian port. Even if it
uses too much memory on the 9210 there's the possibility of it running
on future phones with more memory (Like the SonyEriccson P800).

> One of the things that was/is a problem with the EPOC port is the
> apparent need for the globals to be gathered into a struct of some
> some sort and initialised.

On Symbian (and probably Epoc) if the application is to play nicely
with the OS it is really a DLL that is loaded by the OS. DLL's are not
allowed to have static writable variables to allow them to be placed
in ROM. So the big task in porting is usually to get rid of global
variables. As you mention there is a hack to get around it. You have
the application built as a .exe (which can have global variables) and
a DLL 'front end' which spawns the .exe inside it's own address
space. The technique is described in the write up about porting Mame
to Epoc:

http://www.symbian.com/developer/techlib/papers/MAME/MAMEDream.html

Chris.




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