Wednesday 23 April 2008

Pre-release of STLport 5.1.5 for Symbian OS available for testing

The new version of STLport for Symbian OS is here! Actually this is just a pre-release that I'm making available for testing, and it's only distributed as source code. If you don't feel like compiling STLport by yourself (even though it's really simple and painless), then you'll have to wait for the official release.
I want to thank everyone who has helped me put together this pre-release by reporting anomalies, fixing bugs or simply leaving comments on this blog. But I still need your help! Please download this source package and test it against your existing code, and report any problems you may have with it.

Download
Get the source package at http://www.webalice.it/marco.jez/files/STLport-5.1.5-symbian-r1-RC.zip.

Platform compatibility
STLport can be used with all non-beta S60 and UIQ SDKs available at time of writing. Beta SDKs may work but I haven't tested them. Please note that I still have to test the library on non-Nokia devices.

Important notes

  • The prerequisites have changed. Please read the INSTALL.txt file located in the ./symbian subdirectory. In a nutshell, this release requires PIPS 1.2 (or Open C MR) and Carbide.c++ 1.3. Older versions may or may not work, but they aren't officially supported. Previous versions of PIPS/Open C have bugs that also affect STLport, so you better stay away from them.
  • STLport headers are now automatically installed into your SDK's epoc32/include directory. In order to use STLport from your applications, the directory to be added to the header search path is now /epoc32/include/stlport. The library name remains stlport_s.lib as in previous release.
  • There is an experimental Python script that automatically builds all configurations of STLport for every SDK that is installed on your system. See INSTALL.txt for details.

Changes

  • updated to STLport 5.1.5
  • added support for UIQ 3.1 and S60 3rd Edition FP2
  • fixed bug in _symbian_ecvt() which affected rendering of numerical values (thanks Peter Barth)
  • fixed bug that affected the reference counting mechanism of the RFs instance in _fstream.cpp (thanks Peter Barth)
  • improved project files and build scripts for easier installation
  • forced null-pointer check after every allocation through operator new, because Symbian's operator new never throws std::bad_alloc
  • minor cleanup to remove some annoying warning messages
  • RTTI (std::type_info) is supported

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

Tuesday 8 April 2008

New release of STLport for Symbian OS coming soon

Yes, I'm still alive. Thanks for asking. :-)

I apologize for the long delay since my last post, but I got captured by things more important than coding for fun... In the last few weeks, however, I found the time to update STLport for Symbian OS to the latest release of STLport, that is 5.1.5.

There are still some issues that need to be resolved, but I've already done most of the work. Before making the release and building the binaries for all supported SDKs, I'll make the source code available for testing. Although I've taken into consideration all comments and emails I've received so far, I couldn't reproduce all errors that were reported by users, so I'll need your help to test the new release!

What's new in this release? The main change is the upgrade to STLport 5.1.5 (see STLport's changelog for details). Some bugs have been fixed, build scripts and project files have been improved to make the installation from source code easier. Also, I've added support for RTTI (std::type_info), although it's still experimental.

The prerequisites have changed. In particular, the PIPS library version 1.2 or newer is required (it can be found in the PIPS 1.2 SDK or in the Open C Plugin MR). Older versions may not work. Note that the S60 FP2 SDK already contains the PIPS library, so no additional packages need to be installed. The "reference" IDE that I use for testing the library is now Carbide.c++ 1.3 Express. Older versions of Carbide may not work.

Stay tuned!