P.I.P.S.

Introduction

Symbian OS is a proprietary operating system with custom architecture, APIs and programming idioms. At the time Symbian OS was designed, the C++ APIs and language standards were immature and did not cater to the particular constraints of mobile or embedded systems. Consequently, Symbian OS created its own idioms to address these constraints.

In time, existing standards such as POSIX (IEEE 1003) grew in scope and were implemented across various platforms, and a large body of 'portable' software was developed that conformed to these standards. Recently, to enable such software to be easily ported to Symbian OS, we have introduced frameworks such as P.I.P.S. and Open C that overlay native Symbian OS APIs with standards-compliant wrappers. These enable you to reuse your existing (standards-compliant) code when developing software for Symbian OS.

P.I.P.S. and Open C are primarily porting aids that help you port POSIX-based software to Symbian OS, quickly and efficiently. 

Read the whole booklet at http://developer.symbian.com/main/documentation/books/books_files/pdf/P.I.P.S..pdf

Useful Links

P.I.P.S. resources on the Symbian Developer Network wiki.

Errata for the booklet.