Minimo appears to be going great guns on Windows CE. This thread is intended as a repository of all information, and current progress on porting to HPC machines given that minimo currently requires a CE 4.2 PocketPC.
Just so people know what we're up against, the size of Mozilla's source tree stands at 214 MB
(224,667,277 bytes
), with 36,319 file in 5698 folders.
...however, the minimo side of things is only 116 files, with the WinCE stuff being 20 files, and 50KB.
Of course, minimo wince links to the other stuff
, but the vast majority of work appears already done: the build environment has been configured to add Windows CE conditional targets throughout: that must have been no small task! Doug Turner deserves a huge amount of praise for his work so far.
The job suddenly seems slightly more manageable...
...but again, things may not be that simple. EVC++ 4 is currently used, and, guess what? That doesn't support HPC2k sdks.
Step 0: See what Mozilla is like!
You need:
- PocketPC 2003 Emulator
(available in the Microsoft SDK
) or PocketPC 2003
- Minimo Build
( available
here
Instructions
-Download the build for emulator or device
-For Emulator, extract all files into a directory, start up emulator, click on "Folder sharing" from the menu, point to the folder you extracted to, then in emulator explore to storage card and call minimo. Wait, and it'll appear.
-For device, copy all files into a single directory, then doube click minimo. Again, wait...
-Try it. Build 006 for the device is significantly more usable than 004...!
Step 1: download and install what you need to build
You need all stuff listed for Windows CE specifically -
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/WinCE/build.html
and stuff for Win32, too, including VC++
(!
). You could try GCC, but I haven't...
http://www.mozilla.org/build/win32.html
You may be able to use the free VC++ compiler - see
http://whereswalden.com/mozilla/msvcfree/
Set up your environment, and try to build for either the device or emulator.
There's a few "gotchas" that I found when building:
- Read the instructions carefully! You need to add a few things to the default CygWin install such as make, perl, ...
- The include file in c:\program files\windows ce tools\wce420\pocket pc 2003\include\armv4\rasdlg.h has an error - it needs the comment on line 12
modifying to actually open the comment. Convert the ** to /*.
(Shame on you microsoft
)
- The standard BAT file provided by Microsoft sets SDK_ROOT incorrectly. This was monumentally annoying to diagnose because everything looked right. Anyhow, change the bat file's %SDK_ROOT% variable to point at c:\
program files\Windows CE Tools
(it omits program files by default
) ARGGH!
I have had a build succeed, but the resulting executable does not run on the WM2003SE device that I have. I get a splash screen, and that's it. The main developer has been asked for input here.
Step 2: Expectation management!
Minimo is currently quite large. The resulting build directory is over 12MB, with the executable being a behemoth: it's 8MB in size. It should be possible to get this down somewhat, especially seeing as Firefox is smaller
Realistically, I am aiming to:
- Get it working on ARM WinCE 4.x devices happily without requiring aygshell.dll. This should be straightforward-ish.
- Get it working on ARM WinCE 3.0 devices. This will be more of a challenge due to the different build tools required, and the reduced memory available on the machines.
The minimum spec I see this even potentially working on is a Jornada 720.
Step 3: Planning our Attack!
Please, if you can help
develop, drop me a
mail or a PM. I'd like to get a core team together so we can work out what needs to be done, and get things split into manageable chunks then allocated to people.
We really
don't need offers of beta testers right now, as soon as we do, the news will be here.
This thread is frozen; as and when we have news
(such as a team is put together
) then it'll get updated!
Nick.
