Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions – Customer Feedback for Microsoft
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11
Having done quite a bit of Windows CE development work in .NET, I totally support the below UserVoice request: re-add support for Windows CE in Visual Studio 2010.
Please vote both the underlying Microsoft connect request, and the uservoice entryif you support it too!
Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions
Microsoft caused outrage when without warning or explanation they dropped support for the Smart Device Extensions. Meaning that there is no support for both managed (Compact Framework) and unmanaged (C++) development for the Windows CE platform.
Microsoft promised support would be added by the time VS2010 was released but then back tracked, to date the official line is use VS2008. This product is nearly 4 years old, it is becoming increasingly more impractical to use VS2008 solely for the purpose of developing for the Windows CE platform. Many development teams invested heavily in the benefit of having a single UI for both embedded and desktop development, with the advent of the Compact Framework skill sets and more importantly the code base could easily be shared across platforms. This is now no longer true, as the desktop development/source control/build/test environments have moved on the embedded development environment is stuck in the past. This means duplication of code, duplication of effort and increased cost.
Anyone wanting to start developing for Windows CE has to first buy an MSDN subscription because you can no longer buy VS2008 retail.
As support for Smart Devices has been inherent in VS since VS2003 many people have been caught out when upgrading to VS2010, in many cases those who make their living in the embedded world are now stuck with no upgrade path. Microsoft has refused to comment or discuss the future of embedded development, this silence has forced many to look at alternative platforms.
One of the top voted suggestions on the Connect site was to restore Smart Device Extension support in VS2010, Microsoft has ignored this in typical fashion.
See the Connect Item.
–jeroen
via Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions – Customer Feedback for Microsoft.
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
Stanko Milosev said
I am currently doing development for WinCe, in Lazarus:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation#Interfaces
and SQLite:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/WinCE_Programming_Tips#Database_Tips
Same code can work in WinCe, Win32 / 64, Linux, and even android (android I didn’t test), and it is Pascal!
jpluimers said
How steep was the learning curve from a C# background?
–jeroen
Stanko Milosev said
My colleagues developed same app in C#, but I was not included in that project, and since I am coming from Delphi world, I had, mostly, no problems to work in Lazarus. Only problem is when you need some API from WIn CE which is not supported by Lazarus, then, what I realized (for Win CE 6 – 6.5), you must follow Windows 95 syntax (something like that).
Also, we moved “back” to Lazarus because with .NET we had lot of problems…