Before the first release of CE, there was an internal toolset called the OEM Adaptation Kit, or OAK, Hall says. Oak, of course, is a type of tree, so the first few Windows CE releases were named after trees:
- 1.0 -- Alder, Nov. 1996
- 2.0 -- Birch, Nov. 1997
- 3.0 -- Cedar, April 2000
According to Hall, there was a second team within the Windows CE group that worked on the tools, which could be considered something that makes a job easier, or "cuts the job down to size." So the toolsets were named after things that cut down trees:
- 1.0 -- Alder -- tools: Axe
- 2.0 -- Birch -- tools: Buzzsaw
- 3.0 -- Cedar -- tools: Chainsaw
The original plan for Windows CE 4.0 was to call the OS DougFir (Douglas Fir) and the toolset Dozer (as in BullDozer). But before 4.0 was released, the OS and tools teams merged and only one codename was needed for the product, according to Hall.
The combined Windows CE development team must have been celebrating the merging of the two teams, for they decided to name CE 4.0 and subsequent releases after whiskies. Here's what resulted:
- 4.0 -- Talisker, Jan. 2002
- 4.1 -- Jameson, June 2002
- 4.2 -- McKendric, April 2003
- 5.0 -- Macallan, Aug. 2004
- 5.0 Network Device Feature Pack -- Tomatin, April 2006
- 6.0 -- Yamazaki, Sep. 2006
Hall's Windows CE blog is located
here.
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