According to the document titled "A1 Setting up Necessary Tools", they say "Although you can develop BlackBerry applications on any platform, even Linux or OSX, the
easiest and best supported is the Windows 32bit platform."
However, when I attempt to download BlackBerry Eclipse Plug-in and BlackBerry Java Development Environments (JDEs), it won't install on Ubuntu or on Mac OS.
Please advise how to create BlackBerry applications with JavaME using either Ubuntu or Mac OS.
...However, when I attempt to download BlackBerry Eclipse Plug-in and BlackBerry Java Development Environments (JDEs), it won't install on Ubuntu or on Mac OS...
I haven't tried this myself, but it looks like technical requirements section suggests OS requirement as below (link):
32-bit Windows® XP, Windows Vista™ or Windows 7 (Note: 64-bit versions require 32-bit Java and Eclipse)
Phone vendors tend to be really weaselly about this. Usually it means "you can develop as general JME apps on any OS" and the fine print is "... but to get all of our support goodies, you need to be running Windows".
It really annoys me. Even the Android stuff offends in this matter a bit, and Android isn't even remotely related to Windows.
You should be able to do decent Blackberry development using the EclipseME plug-in. Except for the Windows-only goodies.
One of the most odious afflictions that Business has inflicted on the modern English language is "pro-active". Most of the time it's simply redundantly used in place of the simple old word "active". And a good deal of the rest of the time it means "You're not overworked enough yet, so go out and find more!"
Carol Hamer
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Joined: Sep 17, 2010
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Tim Holloway wrote:You should be able to do decent Blackberry development using the EclipseME plug-in. Except for the Windows-only goodies.
I agree they should actively support at least the main operating systems. Unfortunately, in BlackBerry's case, the "Windows-only goodies" include the simulator and the program that allows you to connect the smartphone to the PC.
(Note that at least for Mac there's a desktop program to connect to the device, but I don't think there is one for Linux.)
When I first started developing with BlackBerry, I followed the instructions to install the Eclipse plug-in on Windows, and it failed with a cryptic error message because I wasn't using exactly the version of Eclipse that they support (as I explained on my blog). Similarly, the JavaLoader bundled with one version of the JDE connects with my device via USB just fine, but the one bundled with another version of the JDE fails with the ever-so-helpful message: "Error cannot connect to device" (or something to that effect). If the Eclipse plug-in just plain doesn't install on Mac or Linux, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
The most helpful page I've found for trying to do BB development on Linux was this one. But you can see that even the slashdev guys have to just break down and run Windows in a VirtualMachine for some parts of it.
Personally, after spending some time on this, I just installed Windows inside a VM for my BlackBerry development environment (on Linux). As I said on another thread: If you're using VirtualBox, set your VM to accept USB connections before installing Windows in it (unless you love re-installing Windows all day! ), and use the Sun/Oracle free version instead of the open-source edition for USB support.
One thing that might help: many of the newer crop of smartphones have a USB tether and the really good phones will actually automatically configure themselves into a LAN configuration with a Linux desktop. Sometimes you can push and/or pull executables using that route. And if you are fortunate enough to get full-stack services from your smartphone, Eclipse can run remote debugging against the phone's JVM.
How well that works depends on how accommodating your phone is, how accommodating your Linux is and how much effort it's worth.
I admit it, though. For most cases I cop out and install the Windows developer's kit. That's counter-productive, though, since it's an extra 150 watts of heat in my office to fire up the Windows box and this summer has made enough demands on my air conditioning system as it is. I expect to get more productive in that area once the weather cools down.
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), and use the Sun/Oracle free version instead of the open-source edition for USB support.
