Symbian introduces PIPS is POSIX on Symbian OS

[Rafe]

Symbian has announced the forthcoming availability of P.I.P.S. (PIPS is POSIXon Symbian). This allows the running of POSIX libraries on Symbian OS. It is aimed at allowing developers to more easily port existing applications and middleware to Symbian by providing standard POSIX C APIs on Symbian OS.

Read on in the full article.

[jrmt]

> in the second half of Q1 2006.

Umm, aren't we in 2007 now? The Symbian website says 2007, so I assume this is an AAS typo?

[Rafe]

Yes this is me not realising it is in fact 2007. Sorry about that!

[martinharnevie]

OPL still worth a mentioning apparently, albeit so stepmotherly treated....

[akboom]

So what are the implications; what do other developers think?

I think this is the best thing to happen for developers since sliced bread. It will make porting open source apps so much easier.

Hopefully this will not end up like MobInfo; great expectations but it seems to have kind of fizzled out. PIPS needs to be integrated with the core OS, not as an add on sis. It needs to be guaranteed to work on every future symbian device.

Boom

[svdwal]

I don't think it is such a big deal. If your engine happens to be targetted at Posix-compatible systems, it will be nice as it makes porting it a bit easier. But I do not see many people changing their engine to start using PIPS, for instance.

For most developers the availability of code generators for the ui as present in CarbideC++ and VistaMax are much more important, and the move to Carbide C++ iself is probably the most important change of all for developers.

[Rafe]

Yes I'm not convinced about the important of this for commerical developers. However I think it has some interesting implication for porting some opensource projects and for use in academic institutions.