Al Hoang

I got this WinCE device that I’ve been trying to wrangle into a nice cozy environment to do useful things so the first thing I started looking at was the availability of development tools that I can use directly on the device.

In general, I prefer Ruby however I’m not wedded to it since I’d prefer a language that is more

• More mature for the host OS it’s running on
• Can actually DO something besides Hello World
• Actually can access standard libraries that would come with the desktop version (I don’t just want the language core)
• Maintained to some degree
• Not a PITA to install

After looking around I dug up the following :

• Ruby WinCE
• Has Ruby 1.8.6
• Maintained to some degree
• Not much docs in English (that’s fine I read Japanese)
• The installer is basically unzip and plop into a directory somewhere
• Not much docs on what to do with it
• Looks like a “I got it compiled don’t know if it really works” project
• Seems there can be string handling issues
• Ruby CE
• Also Ruby 1.8.6 based
• Seems to be in active development
• Looks like the developer is actually trying to get real code working with it
• More documentation on how to install and bootstrap it
• Seems more promising for using it for real coding over Ruby WinCE
• No lazy installer. Zip files that need splatting on the filesystem
• Pocket Scheme
• An implementation of the Scheme programming language (Not all of it though)
• UTF-8 support (woot!)
• Rather well maintained
• The interpreter/IDE integrates better with the OS
• Supports cut and paste better
• Actually has working sockets
• Can do file manipulation
• Code samples!
• Lazy Installer
• Python CE
• A Python implementation for WinCE devices
• Looks actively maintained
• Actually has a wiki for documentation and it doesn’t seem THAT dead
• Python 2.5 support looks like its available
• Installer available
• Docs seem pretty good
• PPC Hugs
• A Haskell (Hugs-based) implementation for WinCE
• Looks like someone’s school project
• Marked as alpha quality
• No idea what actually works
• Looks like another “It Compiles” projects
• Doesn’t look like its actively maintained
• Documentation looks sparse
• No lazy installer
• Perl CE
• An implementation of Perl for Pocket PC
• First page I hit made it look like it was a dead project
• Docs seem sparse to me
• Looks like it has an installer (as long as you can find which version you need)
• WinCE Emacs
• Okay okay, not REALLY a programming language but… Emacs LISP is close enough…
• Looks like you’re stuck at Emacs 20.7
• Not sure keybindings on WinCE device will be liveable for a Emacs neophyte like me
• Not sure if there is active development to bring more recent Emacs versions
• Seems to have a lazy installer
• Emacs Wiki Page on WinCE Emacs

Also pocketpcfaq.com has a nice listing of languages you can run on your WinCE device.

Too bad I didn’t find any of the following:

• OCaml
• Erlang
• Common Lisp

So after looking at the choices, I think I’m down to Pocket Scheme, Ruby CE, and Python CE. I guess I’ll try them all and report which one seems like the easiest to just goof around with and get something useful done on a CE device.

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