Setting up Eclipse for Symbian OS development

Eclipse is a "universal tool platform", treated here as an integrated development environment (IDE). It is released under EPL, which you can read here. The license allows you to download Eclipse without a fee.

Eclipse can be used for Symbian development. For this, you need a Symbian SDK. Nokia's SDKs for Series 60 can be found at forum.nokia.com, more specifically here. If you need to target Series 60 1.0 (older S60 phones, like 7650, 36xx, N-Gage and N-Gage QD), you will want to download SDK v1.2 Nokia Edition. Newer SDKs are fine too, but the number of real-world devices to distribute your applications to is decreased. Do not install CodeWarrior SDKs. Note that the SDK itself probably requires you to have JRE 1.4.1_02 and for Windows, ActivePerl 5.6.1 installed. For Windows emulator builds you need a wins compiler. If you don't have Visual Studio 6.0, .NET 2002 or .NET 2003 installed, you need to set up certain free tools. For that, see this article. Before continuing, RE-READ THE ARTICLE from the previous link, double-check that you've done EVERYTHING stated there, and read it once again.

On Windows boxes, it is highly recommended that you install both the Symbian SDKs and Eclipse to drive C, otherwise you might run into problems.

After setting up the Microsoft tools and the Symbian SDK, you need the following components:

• Eclipse 3.1M4 (download here or from a mirror here)
• C/C++ Development Tools, CDT 2.1, runtime version (download here)
• Eclipse plug-in for Symbian OS C++ development 0.5.2p (download here)

Unzip Eclipse to desired location (preferably to drive C if you're using Windows, and definitely to same drive where you installed the Symbian SDKs), unzip CDT to the directory just above Eclipse and unzip the Symbian plug-in to Eclipse's directory. Eclipse should detect the plug-in automatically. If the Win32 compiler is detected successfully, you should be able to create a new project from File > New > Project > C++ > Symbian OS. Use the Basic Series 60 application to generate a standard control-based GUI application. If the plug-in cannot detect Win32 compiler, you need to add that manually. In Eclipse, head to Window > Preferences > Symbian OS Development > Win32 Compilation Tools > Add. Name the tool whatever you like (Visual Studio Tools for example) and locate the directory where you installed the tools. Under that directory you should find a directory called bin. Add this to PATH in the Win32 Compilation Tools > Add -dialog.

By default, Eclipse should build the application automatically. To test the application in the emulator, choose Run > Run.., choose Symbian Emulator from the configurations and click New. Choose appropriate project name, and click Run.

For additional information, see this article.