Installing PPL manually on your PDA / Smartphone

The beauty of PPL is that it can run on most StrongARM or XScale powered devices running under PocketPC 2000, 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, 2003se and 2005. However the installer can give you a hard time if your device is not recognized.

There is a solution for you. Install PPL manually. Sounds complicated? Not at all. Here are the steps you will need to follow.

1. Install the latest version of PPL on your desktop PC.

2. Copy the files inside the RUNTIME folder over to your phone using ActiveSync. Copy all the files inside C:\Program Files\PPL\Runtime\*.* to \Program Files\PPL\.

3. Copy PPL.EXE from your PC at the location: C:\Program Files\PPL\PPC\WM2003\PPL.EXE to your phone at \Program Files\PPL\PPL.EXE

4. Now copy \Program Files\PPL\PPC\WM2005\gsgetfile.dll to \ProgramFiles\PPL\gsgetfile.dll

5. On your phone, go into the File Manager application and run \Program Files\PPL\PPL.EXE. The device might ask questions about whether to trust this application, answer yes. It will come up eventually and setup. When done, exit the application.

6. On your PC, start up the PIDE application. At the far right, there is a dropdown box for the target, set the target to Target->Pocket PC.

7. Now compile and run. Again, the first time (or few times) you do this, the device might complain about untrusted applications, continue to answer yes to running them. After answering yes you will see your application run.

If you want to make a standalone application that runs on your device, go to the menus in PIDE, and select
Run / Make Executable. This will make an executable of your project file into the \My Documents directory on your device. The first time you run it, you'll get the untrusted application message, but after that it will just run.

NOTE: The IDE does not run properly on the Motorola Q at this moment due to the screen size, in the meantime you can use the PIDE on your desktop.

Thanks to Rick Eesley for his instructions and patience!