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Before installing the PRC-Tools development kit, you should ensure that any previous versions of the development kit have been removed fully. The install instructions listed here assume you have a naked development environment (first installation).

Consult your documentation for instructions of how to remove applications from your computer.

Basic Utilities
You will need to install a number of basic 3rd party utility applications, so its best to prepare an area for them. The cygwin development environment requires the following directory be available on your computer, and you might as well use it.

C:\Bin

Create this directory before first, it is where helper applications will be installed.

Cygwin Installation
The cygwin development environment is required in order to use the PRC-Tools tool chain and provides a unix style development environment and allows you to build native Windows command line applications.

Download now:

*NB: link no longer valid - please use prc-tools 2.2 if you are a new user [see main page for more info]

Follow the installation instructions and use the following destination directory:

To complete the installation of the cygwin environment, copy the sh.exe application into the C:\Bin directory you created earlier using explorer or the following DOS shell command:

copy "C:\Program Files\cygnus\cygwin-b20\H-i586-cygwin32\bin\sh.exe" C:\Bin

You may be asked to restart your computer, do so if you wish (it is not required at this point).

PRC-Tools Installation
The next step is to install the PRC-Tools development environment. This installation will provide you with a number of tools required to build native Palm Computing Platform applications.

Download now:

*NB: link no longer valid - please use prc-tools 2.2 if you are a new user [see main page for more info]

Install PRC-Tools to the following location:

It will also ask you to choose a directory where the development resources are to be stored. In my experience, I have found that it is beter to seperate the system development resources (such as the SDK) from your personal set of resources. Use the following directory:

At this point, you are ready to install the software development kits. It doesn't hurt to download all the available development kits (they are not that large).

Download now:

*NB: link no longer valid - please use prc-tools 2.2 if you are a new user [see main page for more info]

You will need to sign into the provider pavillion to get access to the palmos 3.5 SDK. Using an unzipping application (like WinZip) you should extract them into the C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot directory. When finished, you should have something like this:

C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\sdk\
                                  \doc
                                  \include
                                  \lib
                                  \samples
                                  \sdk-1
                                  \sdk-2
                                  \sdk-3.1
                                  \sdk-3.5

[patch] - floating point operations
*NB: link no longer valid - please use prc-tools 2.2 if you are a new user [see main page for more info]
If you want to use floating point operations in your Palm Computing Platform applications, you need to replace some files that were installed by PRC-Tools. Unzip the floating point fix and replace the two library files, which can be done using the following DOS-shell commands:

copy libgcc.a "C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\prc-tools\H-i586-cygwin32\lib\
                 gcc-lib\m68k-palmos\2.95.2-kgpd\"

[patch] - SDK 3.5 update 1
*NB: link no longer valid - please use prc-tools 2.2 if you are a new user [see main page for more info]
If you plan on using PalmOSGlue, you will need the 3.5 update. Unzip the update and copy it to its required location using the following DOS-shell commands:

copy libPalmOSGlue.a "C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\sdk\sdk3.5\lib\"
copy libPalmOSGlue-debug.a "C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\sdk\sdk3.5\lib\"

PilRC - resource compiler
At this point you should install the PilRC resource compiler. It contains documentation and some sample code that you may become useful when you start developing applications.

Download now:

.zip - PilRC resource compiler

Unzip it to the C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\ directory and copy the pilrc.exe and cygwin1.dll files into the C:\Bin directory, which can be done using the following DOS-shell commands.

copy "C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\pilrc2.6\pilrc.exe" C:\Bin
copy "C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\pilrc2.6\cygwin1.dll" C:\Bin

POSE - Palm Emulator [optional]
Although not required, The Palm Emualtor is a must install - as it allows you to test and debug your applications without having to install them to a real device (it also allows you to find bugs that dont occur on a real device).

Download now:

.zip - Palm Emulator

Unzip the archive to the C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\PalmOS Emulator\ directory.

In order to get the most out of the emulator, you should be using debug ROMS. You can obtain various ROM images (including debug and seeding images) by being a member of the provider pavillion.

If you want to make the emulator have that "real life" look and feel, download the skins archive and unzip the archive into the C:\Program Files\GNU PalmPilot\PalmOS Emulator\ directory.

INSTALLATION IS COMPLETE

Everything is installed, and now what you need to do is configure your development environment so you can start using the tools! I have been able to successfully install the development environment on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 - so, follow the following links based on what version of Windows you have installed:

Windows 95/98/Me - Windows NT/2000