A preserved copy of mShell, a programming language and IDE for old Symbian phones, plus my own first program written in it back in 2010.
In 2010 I was just learning to code. I didn't have a computer, so I did everything on my Nokia 6600. The tool I used was mShell, an on device development environment for Symbian (S60 and UIQ) built around a small language simply called "m". You could write, test and debug right on the phone, which is exactly why it existed.
Years later I found my old project again: msshot, a little screenshot tool I wrote at the time. While digging around I realized the whole mShell ecosystem had basically vanished from the internet. The official site (m-shell.net) returns 404s for the downloads, the old community mirrors are dead, and even the Wayback Machine only kept the HTML pages, not the actual installer files or the PDF manuals. The version 3.05 setup is a 404 in the archive too.
So this repo is a rescue copy. As far as I can tell, the 3.05 platform installers and the five official PDF manuals are not available anywhere else online anymore. If you came here looking for them, you found the right place.
- The full mShell 3.05 distribution in the root: installers for S60 2nd, 3rd and 5th edition, and UIQ2 / UIQ3 (mShell, mEnvironment and mViewer), plus the five official PDF manuals (
reference.pdf,tutorial.pdf,library.pdf,supervisor.pdf,tools.pdf) ablib/the standard m libraries (abgui, abutils, mscanner) and the mDocumenter tool, all written in m itselfnmisdk/the Native Module Interface SDK (the C++ kit for writing native modules), pulled from the Wayback Machinemsshot/my own 2010 screenshot program, with source and the compiled build
m is its own language, not a fork of anything. The scanner source even says it's a port of the original C++ scanner, so the real implementation underneath is C++. The keyword set (elsif, shl, shr, forward, is, class, try / catch / throw, use) and the colon type annotations put it in the Pascal / Modula / Oberon / Ada family, which fits since airbit, the company behind it, was based in Zurich. It has that "everything ends with end" look that reminds people of Lua, but the family tree is different.
You don't need a build step. The mShell app on the phone opens .m files directly and runs them, and the full standard library ships with the environment.
- Install the right .sis for your device (S60 or UIQ, matching your edition). You need mShell, and mEnvironment for the runtime. mViewer is optional, for running compiled programs.
- Drop any .m script into your scripts folder and run it from the phone
If you want to actually write something new for these old devices, the easiest path today is to feed the PDF manuals to an AI assistant like Claude Code and have it write m code for you. The language is small, the whole reference fits in those PDFs, and since mShell runs .m files with no compiler, whatever it writes you can drop straight onto the phone and run. Apps, games, utilities, all of it.
For each platform there are a few builds. Plain is the standard self signed package. DC and OS are different signing / capability variants (developer cert and open signed), so if one won't install on your device, try another.
My own code in msshot/ is mine to share freely, use it however you like.
The mShell distribution, the PDF manuals, the libraries and the NMI SDK are airbit's work and remain their copyright. They're mirrored here only for preservation, because they appear to be gone everywhere else. If a rights holder wants something removed, get in touch and I'll take it down.