howto integrate blackberry ide with eclipse - final

8/9/2019 HOWTO Integrate Blackberry IDE With Eclipse - Final

1/5

HOWTO integrate the Blackberry IDE into eclipseand known problems and issues

First: If you want to write a Blackberry application you don't need the EclipseME

plug-in. With EclipseME you're writing MIDlets, which are portable to all devices onwhich a Java ME is running. A Java MIDlet application therefore produces a .jad file,

which describes the content of the executable .jar file.

As I noticed, when writing my standard HelloWorld application in the Blackberry

IDE (which is very uncomfortable and the reason why so many people try hard to

integrate the Blackberry stuff into eclipse), instead of the .jad file there appears a .cod

file in the

\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.1\simulator directory.

This implies that you can run any MIDlet (.jad) on a Blackberry but a Blackberry

application (.cod) is Blackberry specific and not portable to other mobile devices.The reasons for this are the special Blackberry APIs.

So, what I am describing is a way to setup eclipse to enable you to write Blackberry

applications. If you want to write a standard portable MIDlet, simply use EclipseME.

After searching and trying a couple of hours, I finally found http://a-developers-

notes.blogspot.com/2007/04/eclipse-environment-setup-for.html. Thanks a lot Alex!

I'm reusing your fabulous tutorial as follows.

Here we go:

1. Download and install Eclipse

2. Download and install Blackberry JDE

3. Download and install Apache ant (see Notes 3)

4. Download RAPC ant task jar file from

http://www.etaras.com/blackberry/rapc

Now let's setup our eclipse environment. These instructions are basically the same asin the Blackberry IDE Developer Guide, Appendix: The Eclipse development environ-ment

1. Start your Eclipse, switch to a brand-new workspace, for example

C:\RIM\workspace. (You also can use one of your existing workspaces, this will

cause no problems.)

2. Go to Window PreferencesJava Installed JREs, click on "Add" button.

3. In the dialog, leave the default "Standard VM" option for JRE type;

4. Type in a "JRE name" as you like, such as 'RIM JRE';

5. In "JRE Home Directory", navigate to your installed JDK home, such as'C\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0';

6. Leave "Default VM Arguments" blank;


2/5

7. Now select all the jar files in "JRE System Libraries", then click "Remove" button

to remove all of them; Click "Add External JARs", navigate to you Blackberry JDE

installation folder, select lib/net_rim_api.jar, such as

'C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.1\lib\net_rim_api.jar'.

8. Click "OK" button to add the new JRE.9. Check the checkbox of your newly added JRE to make it the default (Optional:

select this JRE, click on "Edit" button to see if the system libraries are still like you

set. It happened to me a couple times that eclipse added the jars in JRE home back

into the list.)

With the eclipse setup, we are ready to create our first project:

1. Go to File New Project, select "Java Project", enter Project Name "Hel-

loWorld", Make sure in the JRE group the "RIM JRE" is selected. In the "Project

Layout" group, I prefer to have src and class output into separate folders. Click

"Finish" button.

2. Right click the project, select New Folder, create a folder named "lib"

3. Right click the project, select New Folder, create a folder named "resources"

4. Right click "lib" folder, select "import"; in the dialog, select "general" "file sys-

tem", import the anttask-rapc-1.8.jar you downloaded. Right click the jar file and

select "Build Path" --> "Add to Build Path".

5. Follow the same step to import an icon file in GIF format into "resources" folder

(.png works to). But don't add it to the classpath :-)

6. Create a package named "com.mycompany.sample"7. Create a class named "HelloWorld.java" in this package and paste these code:

Pay special attention to the points, which are written in red. This values will change

depending on your system configuration and your naming.

package com.mycompany.sample;

import net.rim.device.api.ui.UiApplication;import net.rim.device.api.ui.component.LabelField;

import net.rim.device.api.ui.container.MainScreen;

public final class HelloWorld extends UiApplication {

public HelloWorld(){super();MainScreen screen = new MainScreen();screen.add(new LabelField("Hello world!"));pushScreen(screen);

}public static void main(String[] args) {

new HelloWorld().enterEventDispatcher();}

}


3/5

8. Now right click on the project name and create a new file named "build.xml", copy

and paste the following code and edit the JRE and RIM JDK pathes accordingly,

also search and replace the simulator batch file "8800.bat" to one that exists in your

JDE (this ant build script is modified based on a post in Blackberry Java Forum.)


4/5

9. Open a DOS window (cmd), change to the directory where you have your

build.xml file, type "ant simulate", this task will build the project, deploy it and

start the simulator.

This will only work, if your PATH-Variables in your system environment are set

correctly. See the Apache ant introduction for this issue.

Look for the logo you picked for your HelloWorld app and open it, you should see

a blank screen displaying "Hello World!". How exciting! (If you get an error mes-sage, that Port 8000 is already in use see Note 4, at the end of this document.)

Until this point you have not needed to start the JDWP, which will allow you to con-

nect to the Blackberry Debugger from third party IDEs like Eclipse. Due to the fact,

that debugging an application without output sucks, the Blackberry IDE comes with

a debugger.


5/5

HOWTO Debug you application from within eclipse

1. Start the Blackberry debugger with Start Programs Research in Motion

Blackberry IDE 4.2.1 JDWP. It is listening to the port 8000 by default.

2. Make sure the Launch Simulator when debugger connects field is active.3. Switch to Eclipse. Window Preferences Java Debug. In the Communica-

tion area set the values of Debugger Timeout and Launch Timeout to a

higher value. At least 10 times longer, if you can still not connect to the simulator

because of a Timeout, set the values still higher. Click OK and leave preferences.

4. Click on your project. Then Run Open Debug Dialog Java Remote Applica-

tion. Right click on itNew. Now you should have an entry with the name of

your project.

5. Click debug.

6. You can now normally set breakpoints as usual and debug step by step. You canalso use the System.out.println(); method for debugging. The output is dis-

played in the Remote Debug Server (which was started by JDWP). Click the out-

put tab and here your see your System.out.println()s among other debugging

messages from the Blackberry VM.

Notes:

1. This will not run which Blackberry IDEs version lower then 4.1, because you will

need the JDWP to connect from third party IDEs to the Blackberry simulator for

debugging purpose.

2. The Java Compliance Level for the Blackberry project in Eclipse has to be 1.4 or

lower. Otherwise you will get some unexplainable error messages.

3. You really have to install Apache ant. It is not enough to use ant coming with

Eclipse, at least not if you are using the build.xml file delivered in this document.

As you can see: de-

mands a start from the command line.4. The reason why your port 8000 is in use, could be, that you have already started the

JDWP. Which you dont need until this point. So close it. If you still get this message,

open the task manager and kill the application manually.

howto integrate blackberry ide with eclipse - final

Documents