Some development platforms lack documentation, others have an overwhelming amount of documentation to sift through. Though I’m not complaining, BlackBerryRIM falls in that latter case so I’m sharing this quick “setup” guide in as few lines as possible for a Mac/Windows environment (sort of, I used Parallels because of the lack in Mac support right now).
UPDATE: The BB site changed since this post. If you want to do pure BB J2ME apps follow steps 1 & 2 then download the full installer here: to http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/javaeclipseplug.jsp Otherwise, I recommend BlackBerry Widgets for OS 5.
For BB MDS Development, Download & Install:
After installing Eclipse you’ll need to install the downloaded plug-ins. Open Eclipse -> Help -> Software Updates -> Available Software -> Add Site... -> Archive -> Browse to the downloaded zip file and Open.
Do this for each then check off the plug-in boxes and click Install.
Tip: You can also add the update site for the BB Plug-ins eclipse by adding this site - http://www.blackberry.com/go/eclipseUpdate Alternatively, you could have used this site to get all the plug-in components but I wasted some time with it due to lost connections. Better to use this method for update purposes only.
After installing everything open a Workbench for BB, create a BB project, and start coding.
There are three development approaches in the BB RIM platform: Web Development, Rapid Application Development with MDS, and Java Application Development. I recommend this hello world example for a Java app to get your feet wet.
Hey Flav,
Great article. I downloaded the BB tools at work earlier this year and it was a real pain finding all the little pieces that you needed. Especially since at that time some of the downloads on the dev site had corrupted installers. Had been planning on installing this at home too so you just made my life easier.
thanks,
Mike