Here's some advice: If you're ever developing a smart device application using Visual
Studio .NET 2003 and you receive the following error while trying to debug/deploy,
give up and go home:
"Cannot establish a connection. Be sure the device is physically connected to the
development computer"
I'm able to code against the emulator without a problem, but recently got to work
on writing a small server application that would run on a PocketPC. After pounding
out a few hundred lines, I got to the point that I could test some basic functionality.
Because this app requires a static IP, and because I don't know how to assign a static
IP to the emulator, I got out an old CF network card and plugged it into the iPaq.
Everything was fine: I could browse the internet, network shares, and sync with the
desktop.
The one thing that wouldn't work was VS - Every attempt to run/deploy my app from
VS resulted in the aforementioned error.
I went to the newsgroups, did a bajillion Google searches, and checked every forum
I could. I collected a list of possible solutions.
Well, two days later, I still can't deploy to the device from VS. This was a problem
in the past, but I just ignored it and did everything with the emulator. This time,
however, the emulator wasn't an option, so I got stuck with having to test on the
iPaq, and VS just doesn't want to cooperate.
I think that I've dumped about ten hours into this already. That's time that should
have been spent coding, but was instead spent trying to work around the most irritating
bug I've ever encountered in an MS product.
It's infuriating - Embedded Visual Basic and Embedded Visual C++ both still work.
Well, eVB actually refused to deploy, but it's because it wanted to push out to a
PocketPC 2000 device, and my iPaq is a 2002. Hey - At least it told me why it
didn't want to work. eVC++, on the other hand, worked just fine.
The compact framework is really cool, and the people behind it should pat themselves
on the back. However, the team responsible for integrating deployment and debugging
for the CF into VS should, well, have a stern talking to.
I'm pretty mad. After doing a bit of research, I found out that this bug has affected tons of
developers. Why there isn't better documentation on it is a total mystery, to say
nothing of a patch.
I've pretty much always liked the dev tools MS puts out - I've been coding with MS
products since MS Basic 1.0.
This is the first time I've actually stopped working on a project simply because the
provided tools don't work.
Two days of time, a few hundred lines of code, and one good idea down the drain...
At least I tried to deploy while the project was still < 1000 lines of code.
Argh.
The one good thing I can take away from this is that, while reinstalling VS for the
second time in two days, I got to work on a short story I've been wanting to write
for a while now.
So, screw the app. I'm going to go write some more...