Nokia just announced the immediate availability of the Open C Plug-In extension for the S60 3rd Edition Software Development Kit (SDK), enabling easier porting of Linux-targeted open source projects to Symbian OS-based S60 smartphones and increased productivity for developers of mobile applications running on S60 devices.

Nokia's Open C significantly improves productivity of S60 developers working in the Symbian C/C++ environment, giving them the use of familiar standard C function libraries for easy migration of open source and desktop applications to S60 on Symbian OS. By enabling the reuse of code from existing open source projects, Open C frees up developer time and resources to focus on the core mobility aspects of their applications.

Available for download here, the Open C SDK Plug-In announced recently allows deployment of Open C projects on existing S60 3rd Edition devices, millions of which have already been shipped into the global marketplace.

Open C makes it possible for developers to implement business logic and other core components of an application without having to learn Symbian's proprietary C++ variant. In addition, Open C delivers to developers significant portions of three open source projects - OpenSSL, GNOME, and LIBZ - providing the S60 developer community access to middleware functionality that is shared by many important open source projects, including Apache and Firefox.

Through its implementation of five additional middleware C libraries and extension of four Unix-compatible, industry standard mobile POSIX libraries on Symbian OS that were recently introduced by Symbian, Open C provides an optimized solution to migrate open source and desktop applications to S60 on Symbian OS.

Key features of the Open C SDK Plug-In for S60 3rd Edition now available include: Headers and libraries of the C libraries (ARMv5, GCCE, WINSW); Emulator DLLs; Signed SIS package for installing Open C libraries to device; Open C API documentation; Open C example applications; and libglib sources and LGPL license text file.