Introduction to the Developer Library

The Symbian Developer Library is a large document set. This topic is designed to help you get the most from it.

The Symbian Developer Library collects the essential information needed by developers programming for Symbian OS. It provides definitive documentation for the Symbian APIs common to all phones based on Symbian OS. Its reference and guide material:

• Describes the OS architecture

• Documents the common interfaces and APIs available to developers in all platforms based on Symbian OS

• Describes essential programming conventions and idioms

• Describes the development tools and build environment needed to create and deploy software for Symbian OS phones

The canonical edition of the Developer Library is distributed by Symbian as an HTML documentation set, available as a download directly from Symbian Developer Network. The Developer Library is also redistributed in licensee SDKs.

It is designed to be compatible with any Web browser supporting tables and stylesheets, including Netscape 6.01 and higher, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher, Opera 5.0 and higher.

The Developer Library documents a comprehensive set of Symbian OS example projects. Ready to build source code for all example projects is available for download from Symbian Developer Network.

Note that the Developer Library does not document licensee extensions, including licensee platforms and phone-specific UIs. Documentation for licensee extensions is available directly from licensees through their developer support programmes.

Check the Developer Network for the latest developer news and for software and Developer Library updates, and for links to Symbian licensee and partner sites.

The Developer Library includes:

• Symbian OS guide, a comprehensive introduction to Symbian OS, includes information about the latest release, system overviews, the C++ API Guide which provides subsystem by subsystem overviews of all key APIs, and Using and How To topics which provide detailed discussion and coding examples for many of the most frequently used APIs.

• Symbian OS reference, the definitive source of reference information for all Symbian OS C++ APIs.

  The reference contains the C++ component reference, the Resources reference and the System panic reference.

  The C++ API reference describes the C++ types that provide operating system services to programs.

  The documentation lists the operating system's components, grouped together by subsystem (a high level grouping of components with related purposes). Within each section, a reference page for each API item is provided, organised alphabetically.

  A reference page provides details of the item including header file; derivation information; an alphabetical list of class members; and a description of each member.

  The Resources reference gives reference documentation in a similiar format for APIs in Symbian OS's resource language.

  The System panic reference documents the panics that system components can produce. A panic is an error code raised by a component in response to a programming error, such as passing an illegal parameter value. A panic terminates the thread calling the function, or in the case of server programs, which perform functions on behalf of other threads, the client thread making the illegal request.

  A panic consists of a category, a string that typically indicates the component that is producing the panic, and a reason code, a number indicating the cause of the panic. The reference has a page for each panic category; each page contains a table of possible reason codes for that category.

• Examples, gives instructions for building and using the large set of C++ examples that accompany the Developer Library. Projects include examples demonstrating the use of fundamental Symbian OS classes, essential techniques and idioms that can be employed in developing Symbian OS applications, and many examples showing how to use particular Symbian OS C++ APIs.

  Note that in licensee customised versions of the Developer Library, the generic Symbian OS examples may be replaced by phone specific examples. The generic examples, together with the relevant Developer Library documentation, can be downloaded from Symbian Developer Network.

• Tools and Utilities, guide and reference to Symbian programming language independent utilities, includes the Build tools guide and Build tools reference which explain the project files required for Symbian OS programming, and how to build for the various native and emulated targets.

  Tools And Utilities also explains the other tools which support your development, including those for creating application information files (which supply application icons and captions), bitmap files, resource files, installation package files, and help files.

• Glossary of terms and key concepts appearing in the Developer Library.

• Index to all classes, enumerations, typedefs, constants and flags, non-member functions and macros which are documented in the Developer Library, as well as a complete tree index to the Developer Library itself.