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NETMF 4.2 – Porting Kit Studio

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Version 4.2 went to Beta a few days ago with an impressive assortment of contributions from the community.  One contribution stands out for its scope and ambition.  That contribution is the PKStudio contributed by Alexandr Surkov and Igor Kiselev.

As anyone who has tried the NETMF Porting Kit, it is not for the faint of heart.  It was built for us to use and we have not gotten back to polishing it up.  Alexandr and Igor have tackled that problem by analyzing the porting kit and building an IDE for it!  Very Impressive.  Features are displayed in a tree structure and you can then build the solution as an aggregate of features.  Below you can see both the solution explorer and the feature explorer. 

Inside that structure, you have access to the source files for editing, you can compile the projects, track down compile errors, etc.

Here you can see the references in a graph so that you know what components are required to support specific functionality. Below, you can see the both the managed and native dependencies of Tinycore and you can see that there is a dependency on the Battery and Charger API that you might not have guessed. You can now stub that out if your application does not need it.   Another thing that you can see in this view is the dependency on the battery measurement feature for which you may have several drivers.  PK Studio gives you an easy way to associate the right driver for this implementation and package it all up in an image. 

PK Studio can generate make files that are compatible with µVision, the IDE for the Keil MDK tool chain.  Currently the make files support the 3.80a version of the MDK. PK Studio will generate one project for each of the native images of a Micro Framework solution, eg. TinyCLR, TinyBooter, NativeSample,… Below you can see the µVision IDE loading the make files for the TinyCLR project generated with PK Studio .

There is also the Component Analysis that is an analog of the Visual Studio Code Analyzer.  It checks the references, GUIDs, names, and other parts of the components

Finally, there are additional feature coming for the RTM release.  These include an interface to manage you project.

Great work guys – thanks for the contribution to NETMF and all your efforts. 

Technorati Tags: NETMF,.NET Micro Framework,Porting Kit,PK Studio,Porting Kit Studio. Version 4.2,Solution Wizard

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2011
    Hi Collin, Where is the PK Studio, I cannot find it. Could you point me to the download link? Thank you.

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2012
    It is linked from the bottom of the netmf.com page.  

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2012
    Where is the PK Studio? I cannot find it in netmf.com page

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2012
    Is PK Studio  a Tool Software like SoloutionWizard, or an other name of Porting kit ?

  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2012
    PK studio is a tool that makes helps get through the porting kit process - like a wizard.  

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2013
    Years go by and not one person is willing to share where the PK Studio download is? it is not linked from the netmf.com website. Even the 4.2 PK download talks about this "wonderful" new feature, but a link to where this can be downloaded, nope. why is this so difficult to get?

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2013
    PL Studio is actually in the porting kit, at least according to the docs, which you can find here netmf.codeplex.com/.../81000

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2013
    I was also looking for it, finally found the answer : netmf.codeplex.com/.../latest