What's new

First P.I.P.S. add-on library - Zlib compression (libz) in P.I.P.S.

Also, new P.I.P.S. v1.2!

Scroll down to see both!

What is P.I.P.S.?

P.I.P.S. Is POSIX on Symbian OS. POSIX libraries on Symbian OS significantly reduces the effort required to migrate existing desktop and server components, and mobile applications from other platforms, onto Symbian OS.

POSIX or Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX is a set of software standards specified by the IEEE  that allows applications to be written to a single target environment in which they can run unchanged on a variety of systems. (Source: wikipedia)

P.I.P.S. helps broaden and deepen the development community for Symbian OS and improves developer productivity. It enables C programmers to more easily migrate existing middleware and applications, either commercial or open source, to Symbian OS by providing standard POSIX C APIs on Symbian OS.

Read the P.I.P.S. press release

Documentation

We've put up an API reference and a general user guide (which updates and expands on the P.I.P.S. booklet). They're both in beta, so they're not yet perfect. For instance, the entry for mmap() doesn't list which flags are not supported (PROT_NONE and some MAP_ flags). The guide gives both background information about the P.I.P.S. architecture and also help about how to use the components.

About the v1.2 release

The v1.2 release features IPv6, multicast support, new IOCTLs and socket API enhancements as well as various bug fixes (Refer changelog section in readme.pdf for details). This release is the same as the PIPS package in the Open C release dated November 22, 2007 (Open C Plug-in MR).

This release is not compatible with the v1.0 (February 15, 2007) release, but is compatible with v1.1 release (July 17, 2007). Please refer to pips_v1.2_readme.pdf for more detailed information.

This release supports Symbian OS v9.1 and v9.2.

Licence

 SYMBIAN REDISTRIBUTION AND USE LICENCE

The latest P.I.P.S. files - v1.2 release

About the P.I.P.S. libz v1.2 release for UIQ 3.0/3.1

The v1.2 release of P.I.P.S. libz is a full-featured port of the Open Source zlib compression library (www.zlib.net). libz was ported using the P.I.P.S libraries featured here. Developers can now use basic compression, decompression and operate on gzip (.gz) files from both P.I.P.S applications as well as native Symbian applications. P.I.P.S. libz expects P.I.P.S. v1.1 or newer as prerequisite on your platform. Please refer to the README for details.

This release supports UIQ phones runnning Symbian OS v9.1 and v9.2.

The latest P.I.P.S. libz files - v1.2 release

P.I.P.S. libz release for S60

You can get the equivalent libz SIS file for S60 devices from the latest Open C Plug-in MR release dated November 22, 2007. See the libz README for a direct link.

Ask a question on the P.I.P.S. forum 

Go to the P.I.P.S. forum. 

Nokia Open C 

Development of applications and services for the S60 platform is faster and more cost-efficient than ever before with Open C, which is based on P.I.P.S.  Find out more about Open C 

http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2007/pr20078721.html 

P.I.P.S. Essential Booklet 

Download the P.I.P.S. Essential Booklet.

A history of P.I.P.S.

Symbian first announced P.I.P.S. in January 2007. There was a long path leading up to this announcement and release and, being software, things haven't always gone 100% smoothly! Internally P.I.P.S. was created in the excitingly name "GT314" project - but nothing to do with pi or irrationality! This, of course, implies that, there have been 313 previous projects - all contributing to or improving components in Symbian OS.

One of the key people behind the P.I.P.S. concept was Martin Tasker - the same Martin who appeared on the front of "Professional Symbian Programming", more commonly known in Symbian circles as the "red book". Of course many other people have contributed to P.I.P.S. too, in many teams and countries. Also it just so happened that when Symbian started thinking about POSIX, so did our colleagues at Nokia S60. When two parties come up with the same idea at the same time, you know it's probably important. Obviously it made sense to work together; the result is P.I.P.S. and S60 Open C (Open C is a superset of P.I.P.S.).

Looking back at the project history, it's been a long path - there were internal ideas back at the end of 2005 and work done throughout 2006. There were various technical issues to be overcome, such as file handle mapping and the writable static data (especially on the emulator). There's still more to do on our roadmap, meaning there's precious little time to sit back and enjoy the good response we've had to the product.

Oh and the name P.I.P.S.? Well the originator's name will remain a secret - but he knows who he is ... it could just be a developer in Symbian's Developer Marketing department...

Archived P.I.P.S. files 

v1.1 July 17 2007 

v1.0 February 15 2007 

Example VNC port using P.I.P.S.

Symbian hired an independent company to run a series of tests using P.I.P.S.  You can read the results in the two white papers and download the code below.