Converting MIDP suites to .PRC files

[Frank Manno]

Originally posted by Michael Yuan:
OK, back to your Palm question: The RPC conversion tool for Palm OS is very old and buggy. I have not used it since I got my new PocketPC phone edition (I can run both MIDP and PersonalJava on PPC). But I tend to remember that it cannot handle too large JAR files since their is a limit for "record length" in the underlying Palm OS ...

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I don't want to throw this thread's topic off, but I wanted to ask Michael: How do you run your J2ME apps on the PPC? I recently purchased an ipaq, and would love to know how you're doing it!
Thanks,
Frank
--> Back to the regularly scheduled conversation
</INTERRUPTION>

[Michael Yuan]

Install a JVM. The easiest is to download the IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer IDE and install the J9 Personal Profile on your PDA.

[Layne Lund]

I guess I'll resurrect this thread again. I have fixed my earlier problems and can run midlets on Sun's implementation for MIDP 1.0. Now I have encountered the same error when I try to use the PRC converter tool:

File:/home/layne/code/java/midlets/WelcomeJar/Welcome.jad 
Result:Failed: The .JAR file cannot be converted as critical information is 
missing or formatted incorrectly. Try downloading the file again or contact 
the application provider. ErrCode=1070  

Any new ideas about what I need to do to fix this?
Layne
[ August 15, 2003: Message edited by: Layne Lund ]

[Daryl Wilding-McBride]

Have you checked that your class files are preverified? And were they created with the right target flag (i.e. 1.1)?

[Layne Lund]

With help from my new book, Java Development on PDAs, I figured out how to convert my jar/jad files into a prc file. Using the command line, you do something like

java com.sun.midp.palm.database.MakeMIDPApp

As long as the Converter.jar file is in the classpath, this will list the options you can use to convert a midlet into a prc file. (You could also specify the Converter.jar file as a command line argument, but this is the way I got it to work.) Once I got all the options correct, the resulting error message were much more helpful than when I ran the GUI Converter tool.
I hope this helps someone in the future when the have the same problem.
Layne