This book is meant to introduce you to ACCESS Linux Platform application development, and to familiarize you with the tools and techniques you'll need to develop the majority of ACCESS Linux Platform applications. There are numerous subject areas in which you'll likely want to dig deeper, however, and this chapter is intended to help you figure out where to look for that additional information.
Third-Party Books
There are numerous third-party books on Linux and all aspects of Linux application development. Because ACCESS Linux Platform contains a number of widely-used open source technologies, and because the SDK employs many popular open source tools, you'll find that there are many good third-party books on Linux application development that can be helpful. Consult your favorite online or brick-and-mortar bookstore for the latest such books.
Additional SDK Documentation
The following documents are among the set that is provided with the ACCESS Linux Platform SDK:
- Getting Started with the ACCESS Linux Platform SDK
- Walks you through the process of installing and configuring the ACCESS Linux Platform SDK. Also includes material on working with the Simulator and a more in-depth explanation of the Scratchbox build environment in which you create ACCESS Linux Platform applications.
- Working with Multimedia
- provides information necessary to create an application using the ACCESS Linux Platform Multimedia Framework. It describes the architecture from a high level perspective and provides instructions on how to use the APIs within this framework.
- Communications Guide
- Describes those middleware components that developers can use to control and customize communications on devices running ACCESS Linux Platform. These components provide a framework between the lower-level kernel facilities and higher-level applications, and expose a set of APIs used by third-party application developers.
- User Interface Widget Reference
- The ACCESS Linux Platform features new and modified widgets that you can use to develop applications that are particularly well-suited to the kind of devices that run ACCESS Linux Platform. This document lists and describes each of the available widgets that you can use in your applications.
- API Reference
- Reference documentation for the APIs exposed by those ACCESS Linux Platform components developed by ACCESS engineers. Note that reference documentation for most of the open source components is not included in the SDK. The reference documentation that is provided is in HTML format, and can be found at
/opt/alp-dev/sdk/docs/doxygen/index.html. - Developing Web Content for NetFront Browser
- Helps you create web content that is ideally suited for viewing on mobile devices running the NetFront Browser. Note that the
Browser_Referencedirectory contains reference documentation for various aspects of the NetFront Browser. - Virtual Phone Guide
- Virtual Phone is a development tool that can help you test ACCESS Linux Platform applications that support mobile telephony. This book will help you understand how to use Virtual Phone with the ACCESS Linux Platform Simulator to test your telephony applications.
Open Source Documentation
For a list of the open source modules used in ACCESS Linux Platform, see /opt/alp-dev/sdk/docs/Open_Source/OpenSourceModules.html. The following links help you locate documentation for some of the more useful open source modules and tools:
- BlueZ
- An implementation of the Bluetooth™ wireless standards specifications for Linux.
http://www.bluez.org/documentation.html - D-Bus
- Offers a simple way for applications to communicate with one another.
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus - Eclipse
- A widely-used open source IDE. You use Eclipse to code, build, and debug both x86 and ARM versions of your ACCESS Linux Platform applications. Eclipse provides the front-end to tools such as gcc (the compiler) and gdb (the debugger).
http://www.eclipse.org/documentation/ - gcc
- The compiler used in the GNU system including the GNU/Linux variant.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html - gdb
- The GNU Project debugger,
gdballows you to see what is going on "inside" another program while it executes—or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/ - gdbserver
-
Acontrol program which allows you to connect your program with a remote GDB connection and perform remote debugging.
http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb_18.html#SEC162 - GIMP
- The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
http://www.gimp.org/docs/ - Glade
- A RAD tool that enables quick and easy development of user interfaces for the GTK+ toolkit.
http://glade.gnome.org/documentation.html - GNet
- A simple network library built upon
GLib.
http://www.gnetlibrary.org/#Documentation - GStreamer
- A library that allows the construction of graphs of media-handling components, ranging from simple Ogg/Vorbis playback to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing.
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation - GTK+
- A multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.
http://www.gtk.org/ - libglade
- The libglade library enables a program to load its user interface at runtime from an XML-format description (the format of the XML file is that of the user interface builder GLADE). Libglade also provides a simple interface for connecting handlers to the various signals in the interface, and with a single function call you can connect all the handlers.
http://www.jamesh.id.au/software/libglade/ - Make
- Controls the generation of your application bundles from the program's source files.
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/ - OpenSSL
- A robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and open source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. http://www.openssl.org/docs/
- Scratchbox
- a cross-compilation toolkit designed to make embedded Linux application development easier.
http://www.scratchbox.org/documentation/user/scratchbox-1.0/ - SQLite
- A small C library that implements a self-contained, embeddable, zero-configuration SQL database engine.
http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html - SyncML
- (Synchronization Markup Language) is the former name (currently referred to as: Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management) for a platform-independent information synchronization standard.
http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/affiliates/syncml/syncmlindex.html
For those tools and technologies not linked to from here, use your favorite web search engine to track down what is publicly available online.
