App Catalog and Classic App

[mrbeears]

Hi,

I noticed that App Catalog was missing from the Launcher.
Is there any way to access it from SDK? (Is it possible to load this onto
SDK somehow?)

Is there downloaded file of Pre Classic? I wanted to see how well SDK
works with Classic and Palm OS applications.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by mrbeears

Hi,

I noticed that App Catalog was missing from the Launcher.
Is there any way to access it from SDK? (Is it possible to load this onto
SDK somehow?)

Is there downloaded file of Pre Classic? I wanted to see how well SDK
works with Classic and Palm OS applications.

Nope, no way to get it with the SDK. And no, you can't get the SDK to run Classic because it's emulating an x86 device running webOS. The actual Pre is of course an ARM device, so a lot of stuff just won't work on the SDK (any of the optware packages, Classic).

[mt1128]

jhoff80, have you tried to run Classic on the emulator?

I've been wondering the same thing as mrbeears - whether we can get Classic to run on the emulator (our company does PalmOS Garnet development, so it would be handy).

So far I have managed to get the App Catalog onto the emulator and working up to a point (can't actually download apps because it claims I don't have an active palm profile). However, the App Catalog was written with Mojo, and from what I understand everyone is assuming that Classic uses native code. If the emulator is truly x86 (which stands to reason), that would mean that you couldn't write native apps and test them with the emulator, right?

I would appreciate some confirmation on this, as I am in Australia and therefore have no way of getting a physical Pre.

[jhoff80]

I've done the same thing as you it sounds like, copy the App Catalog from a device onto the emulator, and again got stuck at the same spot you did.

The issue with Classic is two-fold. First, the base install of webOS on the device includes a bunch of files necessary for Classic, which the emulator doesn't have. I copied everything that was originally included on the device over to the emulator, along with the HTML part of Classic. Didn't work, it gave a red and white screen.

I then ran a hidden script in one of those directories on the emulator (it was called .prepare.sh - figured it was worth a try.) Still, same red and white screen.

I can't guarantee it won't work but I really think that you can't run native apps on the emulator. As an example, the ipkg-opt which is compiled for the Pre's ARM processor and run during the process of rooting the device, doesn't work on the emulator, and needs a differently compiled x86 version.

[mt1128]

Thanks jhoff, good to know someone else has tried it too. Looks like I'll probably have to wait until the Australian release in August. Oh well.

...unless there's some way to image the webOS doctor ROM onto an ARM emulator, but that's a really really really long shot.