Mobile Development News

This is great news for BREW developers. A BREW developer can now do gdb-like debugging with code running on the target handsets.

Of course, there's always a catch:

The BREW Debugger is an on-target debugger comprised of a device client and Windows-based GUI that allows developers to execute classical debugging commands on GCC compiled code running on the target. The BREW Debugger requires BREW 3.1.1 or later releases of the BREW API.

Yes, that's right. Not only does the code need to be GCC compiled, but it needs to be targetted at 3.1.1 devices. Well now. The brand new handsets just coming out next month are BREW 2.1, and only a handful of BREW 2.1 handsets are out now (such as the LG VX7000 and Motorola V710). In other words, the market is just getting rolling with BREW 2.1.

So how useful is this? Well, it's not useful at all for the current generation of BREW phones (at least in the US). However, it will be extremely useful for the next generation of BREW handsets.

More information can be found here and the BREW debugger can be downloaded from here if you're an authenticated BREW developer.