With the release of SDK 3.8, all Pebble platforms can be targeted with one SDK. This enables developers to make use of lots of new APIs added since SDK 2.9, as well as the countless bug fixes and improvements also added in the intervening time. Some examples are:
Timezone support
Sequence and spawn animations
Pebble timeline support
Pebble Draw Commands
Native PNG image support
8k AppMessage
buffers
New UI components such as ActionMenu
, StatusBarLayer
, and
ContentIndicator
.
The stroke width, drawing arcs, polar points APIs, and the color gray!
To try out the beta SDK, read the instructions on the SDK Beta page.
To be compatible with users who update their Pebble Classic or Pebble Steel to firmware 3.x the following important changes MUST be made:
If you are adding support for Aplite, add aplite
to your targetPlatforms
array in package.json
, or tick the 'Build Aplite' box in 'Settings' on
CloudPebble.
Recompile your app with at least Pebble SDK 3.8 (coming soon!). The 3.x on
Aplite files will reside in /aplite/
instead of the .pbw
root folder.
Frankenpbws are not encouraged - a 2.x compatible release can be uploaded
separately (see Appstore Changes).
Update any old practices such as direct struct member access. An example is shown below:
// 2.x - don't do this!
GRect bitmap_bounds = s_bitmap->bounds;
// 3.x - please do this!
GRect bitmap_bounds = gbitmap_get_bounds(s_bitmap);
Apps that make use of the png-trans
resource type should now make use of
built-in PNG support, which allows a single black and white image with
transparency to be used in place of the older compositing technique.
If your app uses either the Dictation
or Smartstrap
APIs, you must
check that any code dependant on these hardware features fails gracefully when
they are not available. This should be done by checking for NULL
or
appropriate enum
values returned from affected API calls. An example is
shown below:
if(smartstrap_subscribe(handlers) != SmartstrapResultNotPresent) {
// OK to use Smartstrap API!
} else {
// Not available, handle gracefully
text_layer_set_text(s_text_layer, "Smartstrap not available!");
}
DictationSession *session = dictation_session_create(size, callback, context);
if(session) {
// OK to use Dictation API!
} else {
// Not available, handle gracefully
text_layer_set_text(s_text_layer, "Dictation not available!");
}
To handle the transition as users update their Aplite to firmware 3.x (or choose not to), the appstore will include the following changes:
You can now have multiple published releases. When you publish a new release, it doesn’t unpublish the previous one. You can still manually unpublish releases whenever they want.
The appstore will provide the most recently compatible release of an app to users. This means that if you publish a new release that has 3.x Aplite support, the newest published release that supports 2.x Aplite will be provided to users on 2.x Aplite.
There will be a fourth Asset Collection type that you can create: Legacy Aplite. Apps that have different UI designs between 2.x and 3.x on Aplite should use the Legacy Aplite asset collection for their 2.x assets.
To fully migrate to SDK 3.x, we also suggest you make these nonessential changes:
Remove any code conditionally compiled with PBL_SDK_2
defines. It will no
longer be compiled at all.
Ensure that any use of app_message_inbox_size_maximum()
and
app_message_outbox_size_maximum()
does not cause your app to run out of
memory. These calls now create AppMessage
buffers of 8k size by default.
Aplite apps limited to 24k of RAM will quickly run out if they use much more
memory.
Colors not available on the black and white Aplite display will be silently
displayed as the closet match (black, or white). We recommend checking every
instance of a GColor
to ensure each is the correct one. GColorDarkGray
and
GColorLightGray
will result in a 50/50 dithered gray for fill
operations. All other line and text drawing will be mapped to the nearest
solid color (black or white).
Apps using image resources should take advantage of the new bitmap
resource
type, which optimizes image files for you. Read the
Unifying Bitmap Resources
blog post to learn more.
In addition to the point above, investigate how the contrast and readability of your app can be improved by making use of gray. Examples of this can be seen in the system UI: