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Build applications outside of the BlackBerry IDE

When you use the BlackBerry® IDE to build an application, the BlackBerry IDE generates a .rapc file containing project settings for the application.

The RAPC application uses the information in the .rapc file to compile an application into a .cod file. To control various elements of the build process when building an application without using the BlackBerry IDE, modify the contents of the .rapc file.

Note: You might modify the .jad file of an application instead of the .rapc file. If you modify a .jad file, add information for the MIDlet-1 and RIM-MIDlet-Flags-1 attributes to the file. When you use the RAPC application to compile the .jad file into a .cod file, RAPC uses the additional tags you added to the .jad file to build the application.

Specify an application name and icon

When you use the BlackBerry® IDE to build an application, the build process uses the MIDlet-1 attribute values to determine the name and icon for the application. To specify a name and icon for an application that you build outside of the BlackBerry IDE, set the values of the MIDlet attribute.
MIDlet-1 attribute value
Description

name

Set this value to specify the application name that the build process uses.

icon-name

Set this value to specify the image file for the application icon.

midlet-class-name

Ensure this value is empty.

Control application startup

When you use the BlackBerry® IDE to build an application, the build process uses the RIM-MIDlet-Flags-1 attribute value to determine how an application starts.

When building an application outside of the BlackBerry IDE, to control how an application starts, set the value of this attribute in the .rapc file. The value for this attribute is a 1-byte integer: a number in the range of 0 to255.

The top three bits (xxx0 0000) of the binary code representation of an integer specify a startup tier. Research In Motion uses the startup tiers 0 to 5 and the auto-restart tier for applications it creates. In the following table, the x indicates unspecified values.
Bitmask
Tier
Description

000xxxxx

7

A startup tier

001xxxxx

6

A startup tier

NNNxxxxx

Other tiers that are reserved for RIM applications

xxxNNxxx

RIM reserves these two bits for future use. They must be zero.

xxxxx1xx

Reserved for RIM applications

xxxxxx1x

An application is a system module

xxxxxxx1

An application that starts automatically when the BlackBerry device starts.

For applications to run when the BlackBerry device starts using tier 6 or 7, you must sign the application .cod file with the RIM Runtime API key.


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