Developers in the handheld sector have had an interesting summer to say
the least.
When Palm's (Quote, Company Info, News) software division PalmSource shipped the
gold master of its latest operating system (Palm OS 5) to licensees on June
15, many were faced with a conundrum: how to deal with a new ARM
microprocessor architecture instead of the DragonBall configurations they've
been used to.
The problem, say developers, is that since the operating system is
running as ARM-native code, often times it won't allow you to patch traps
using legacy 68K code. This is because the mode-switch at each system
call would be significant and would wreak havoc with the carefully-crafted
"application" versus "operating system" division that the 68K emulator has
to maintain.
PalmSource says it has helped with some of the migration in the form of
software support and evangelizing.
"With the new architecture, we wanted to make sure the binary software
could run on the new class of products," said PalmSource Director of Product
Marketing David Creemer. "We give them pretty strict guidelines because the
emulator 68K was so old. We have been very pleased. All the applications
that I
have tried have worked."
