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I have taken over a Windows-CE 6.0 application that I would like to port to other platforms. It is a relatively straightforward, self-contained GUI application, written in Embedded C++ Version 4.0

The very first target I am interested in would be a regular Windows desktop (i.e. XP, Vista, Windows-7).

I understand that porting a desktop application to CE is nontrivial; but what about the reverse, which is what I am interested in? Is going from Windows-CE to Windows Desktop (somewhat) upward-compatible? I sure would love to hear "buy this $1000 Microsoft XYZ C++ development environment and just compile and go!"

(FYI I have no experience with GUI applications nor with programming in the Windows environment; pretend I am but a simple linux/unix guy with decades of C/C++ experience but absolutely no Windows-Fu... ;-)

Daniel Chisholm
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Porting up should, actually, be pretty straightforward. CE is mostly a subset of Win32, with heavy emphasis on Unicode.

You can probably make sure UNICODE is defined, build and, with a little luck, most of it will "just work". Places that are going to be hangups are:

  • The UI is likely to be set for a resolution that doesn't match your PC - often CE apps are targeted to a specific device and resolution and this doesn't necessarily come out very aesthetic on a PC.
  • Anything dynamically loaded (GetProcAddress) from coredll will have to be re-mapped to kernel32/user32/etc
  • If the device uses the SIP (software input panel - i.e. on-screen keyboard) then all of that has to get stripped out.
  • If the app uses any Notifications (icons, etc) that has to get replaced
  • If the app uses any power management, that has to get ripped out
  • If the app uses any device-specific stuff - especially direct calls to drivers, all of that has to be replaced
  • If the app is using point to point queues, that has to get replaced
  • If the app is using the device manager (e.g. to get notifications of copnnected devices) that has to get replaced

Any calls into aygshell.dll are likely to be problematic as well.

ctacke
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  • Thanks, this is most encouraging. Any idea what development environment I should look into? Perhaps "Visual Studio C++ 2010" or whatever it might be called these days? FWIW I think most of the details you raise are likely to be non-issues for me (my CE app uses a 640x480 full screen, it uses a touchscreen but not a keyboard, and beyond that it basically does some TCP and UDP to a remote device and displays results to the user). – Daniel Chisholm May 17 '11 at 20:13