Re: [dotNetRDF-develop] Suggestions for where to start for porting to Windows Phone 7?

[Rob V. <rv...@do...>]

Hi Peter

That's great that you want to contribute a Windows Phone 7 port.

My instinct would be to start with the Silverlight library as a basis and use an additional compiler symbol (e.g. WIN_PHONE_7) alongside #if WIN_PHONE_7 to add in appropriate compatability fixes and work arounds into the core library codebase.  I've had a quick browse through the Silverlight vs Windows Phone documentation on MSDN and can't see anything obvious that is missing that would need to be worked around but until you create a build and start testing you won't know for sure.

I wouldn't use the Lite library as that is a cut down build for full .Net for people who want less dependencies and a smaller memory footprint i.e. it isn't set up to run under Silverlight.

With regards to build process the Silverlight build is currently built against Silverlight 4 so would need to be downgraded to using Silverlight 3 to work on Windows Phone 7 as I understand it.  Essentially the Silverlight project file is a template that only references a few additional code files that provides compatability classes and extension methods to get the core library to build under Silverlight.  The project file defines a load of compiler symbols to use which basically disable a variety of features that can't be supported under Silverlight.  Most of these symbols will probably be needed for Windows Phone 7 though there is one/two you might be able to remove (possibly NO_URICACHE)

The actual project file is then generated using a tool found in Trunk/Build/ExportCoreContentsToTemplate in the SVN repository.  I tend to build these actual builds using the nant and the build file found in Trunk/Build/nant - take a look at the projectgen-silverlight and the compile-silverlight targets to see how this works.  Basically the tool is run to generate the actual project file from the template file and then MSBuild is invoked to actually compile the project file.

So what I would recommend you do is use your preferred IDE to create an empty Windows Phone 7 project and set all the required compiler symbols plus add the Silverlight compatability classes as linked files in the project (ensure you select Add as Link when adding them to the project).  Then create your own nant targets which generate the project file and try to compile it.  If it doesn't compile look into the various errors and make whatever workarounds are needed.  Once its compiled then you can start testing it and seeing how and whether it works and feed back any bugs that need fixing to this list or the bugs list (dot...@li...)

If you need more help/guidance please let me know

Regards,

Rob Vesse

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From: "Peter Kahle" <pk...@ka...>
Sent: 17 December 2010 22:55
To: dot...@li...
Subject: [dotNetRDF-develop] Suggestions for where to start for porting to Windows Phone 7? 

I'd like to start trying to work with dotnetrdf to get it compilable on WP7, but since I'm not really up on the code, I don't know where I should think about starting. Right now, I'm leaning towards starting with the Silverlight library, or the lite library. Anyone have any suggestions or pointers they could offer? Thanks, Peter