HP webOS Developer Blog

(Note: this checklist is now official documentation!  See it with updates on the Palm Developer Center.)

With the PDK Hot Apps promotion starting in the near future, a lot of developers want to submit their C/C++ applications to our catalog. Here are a couple of things to check first to make sure your app doesn’t get rejected.

First, lets look at your application package and executable:

1. Is the app a full-screen app? We’re not accepting hybrid apps (ones that use both JavaScript and PDK code) into the catalog at this time.
2. Does your appinfo.json specify ‘type: “pdk”‘? Earlier examples used the ‘game’ type in the appinfo.json, but we changed that late in the 1.4.5 development cycle so we could better differentiate between apps that were put into the catalog early versus ones from the open submission process.
3. Did you strip the executable? We require that executable files submitted for PDK apps have their debugging information removed. This is normally done by either using the -s option for the compiler or by using the arm-none-linux-gnueabi-strip tool.
4. Did you include a “requiredMemory” line in your appinfo.json file? This is needed to tell the system manager how much memory your app is expected to use, as it helps us keep multitasking working well. One way to determine this number is to open a shell on the device while your app is running and use the “top” command to see its memory use.  If you’re supporting both the Palm Pre and Pixi, be sure to test the memory usage on both devices.
5. Did you build with the 1.4.5 SDK? We changed some API names between our PDK beta and the released version with the 1.4.5 SDK, so make sure you use the latest files to build your application.
6. Did you use only whitelisted libraries?  At this time, we’re only allowing applications in the catalog that use the set of libraries we provide with the PDK.  This list includes the standard C and C++ libraries, SDL (including SDL_image, SDL_net, SDL_mixer, and SDL_ttf), and OpenGL ES (1.1 or 2.0).  If you need other libraries, you should build them yourself and statically link them with your application.
7. Did you use the correct processor architecture arguments?  If you’re building to run on the Pixi, you should use “-mcpu=arm1136jf-s -mfpu=vfp”.  If your application will only run on the Pre, you can use the “-mcpu=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon” switches to take advantage of the new instructions that are only available in the ARM Cortex-A8 processor on the Pre.

Now, let’s look at the actual submission process:

1. Be sure to you properly specify the devices your app runs on.  If you’re submitting a SDL graphics-based app, make sure you only specify the Palm Pre for your PDK app, as SDL-graphics-based apps don’t update the screen properly on the Palm Pixi device. If you did an OpenGL app, you should test on both devices before submitting. If you need to do separate builds for Pre and Pixi, that’s OK; we suggest you give your Pre version your main package ID, and add a “-pixi” suffix for your Pixi version.
2. Be sure to specify webOS 1.4.5 as your minimum OS version.  If you specify an earlier version, the PDK app will be rejected on upload.

Following these rules will keep your app from being rejected by our automated security scanners.  Of course, if the app is going into the catalog, it will still need to pass our friendly app review team.  However, you have to get by the scanner before they can look at it.

For more information on packaging PDK apps, see our helpful article in the PDK guide.  If you have questions, please feel free to ask them in our C/C++ Development with the webOS PDK development forum.