Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

There are many people at Nokia and in the community interested in the status of cool projects aiming to be ready for prime time the day Maemo 5 goes to the hands of real users. These cool projects include the Fremantle Stars but also any other open source project with committed developers behind.

Please have a look at http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Star...her_great_apps and fill the information relevant to your project. Suggest or just apply any improvements in that table in order to help everybody know how are you going and what do you need.

If you play this little game you might get more contributors willing to help in the success of you project, including Nokia and its marketing arm.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Hate to thread-jack, but it's related somewhat... What about projects that are quite Fremantle-oriented (both software-wise and hardware class) but have a terribly low profile ? For example I can't say (with a clear conscience) my app rocks in it's current state or that it has a million supporters as it's not really N810 friendly (i.e. needs GL to be snappy, has a large Qt dependency...).

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I added my application to the list; yes, I'm vain :)

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I'm not sure I understand that page correctly. Should we add our apps to the list of "Proposals for Fremantle Stars" or should we add them to the table at the top? If it's the table what does "bugs.m.o" and "downloads" stand for? Is bugs.m.o different from bugs in garage?
Also, does the "testing" repository already exists?

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

bugs.m.o = bugs.maemo.org = your bug tracker. Unless I got it very wrong :)

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Yes it is, bugs.m.o is the official bugzilla platform for the maemo project and some other remarkable projects (e.g. Canola), is administrated by the maemo bugmaster(Andre).
The tracker in garage is a different system (part of the gforge project), and is administrated by the project owners.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Thanks! So is it somehow a new requirement to have the tracker on bugs.m.o? What would be the advantage? My bugs are currently on garage.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

attila77, in case of doubt just list your project in the table, make all the steps to have it ready for end users (package in extras, Downloads page) and let others decide on how much they want to contribute and promote.

Projects willing to get special attention from the community and Nokia are invited to keep their status in the TABLE. If developers use this table and keep up to date, it may become a very useful reference for the Maemo 5 pre/post launch marketing activities.

"Downloads" means you have a proper page at http://maemo.org/downloads

maemo-testing doesn't exist yet, as far as I know. We start needing it, yes. This goes connected to the fact that we need the agreement and the tools to decide when a package can move from devel to testing. The discussion was started in the maemo-developers list but I'm not sure about the current status. Hopefully a task commited for the next sprint.

It's a recommendation to track your bugs in bugs.maemo.org. The Bugsquad team can provide more details on the reasons. I haven't found actually any place explaining to developers why, so perhaps all we have until now are mail/forum discussions.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Well, a few reasons. First, any project of a certain size needs bug tracking. It helps you, and it helps your users. Second, if you've already got a tracker (Garage, elsewhere) you should consider moving Bugzilla since it's centralized (most users reporting bugs go to b.m.o to do so) and a vastly better tracking platform than GForge. Third, b.m.o comes with its own support staff of administrators and triagers who will be able to pick up some of your bug maintenance workload.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Is there any place where we should request a new product in b.m.o for our apps or we should contact Andre directly ?

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Just use the email address that is displayed in the footer of maemo.org Bugzilla - that is "bugzilla /at/ maemo" and ends up here. The "aklapper /at/ openismus" address works too if you add a "com" at the end. Or file a request in maemo.org Bugzilla against the Bugzilla component in the Website product.

OK. Now to the procedure. I should set up a page in the wiki later today (first of all, hanging out in the park with lots of sun and a bottle of wine certainly has a higher priority for this evening ;-) ) describing the data needed for setting up a new product in Bugzilla.

Basically:

• Which subcomponents would you like to have? See for example Canola here: https://bugs.maemo.org/describecompo...product=Canola , but if
  you don't need that I will just recreate a "General" one.
• A short description of your application would be very nice. See https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi...ication=Extras for examples.
• Do you want to have a "Default Assignee" (a real email address of one person)? If you are a few developers it is probably better to not set it and instead to use the nobody@maemo.org default.
• The "Default QA contact" will be general-bugs@applicationname.garage.bugs (the "general-" at the beginning depends on the name of the subcomponent) and
  everybody who is interested in the product's bug reports can add this virtual email address to his/her watchlist at the bottom of https://bugs.maemo.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email .
• Which Versions and which Target Milestones would you like to have? If it's not important for you they can just be kept as undefined.
• And which users (=email addresses) in maemo.org Bugzilla needs appropriate rights ("canconfirm"/"editbugs") for editing/closing bug reports?

Of course this can all still be changed later on. :-)

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I suppose phonelink won't be of any interest on a maemo phone ...
I suppose nokia will provide tools for dialing and sending SMS :D

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Done: http://wiki.maemo.org/Bugs:Adding_Extra_products .

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Hopefully this whole process can be partially automated with tight integration into Garage and some of the maintenance load shifted onto product owners. We're waiting for the upgrade to 3.4 before we can make much progress on this, though.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Only 3 applications have reported their status at http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Star...her_great_apps - from them only 1 not being an official Fremantle Star.

Dear developers, trust me if I tell you that these can be your most efficient 5 minutes of marketing spent in your projects.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I threw Easy Debian in there. Maybe someone in Nokia wants OpenOffice to run on the N900 as much as I do ;)

EDIT: having seen Quim's comments on Gnumeric and Abiword, I guess my project will be considered "too geeky," well then so be it. Despite what Nokia thinks, there seem to be a lot of (geeky) users out there who have found Debian apps to be very useful on the current generation tablets...

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Maybe we should add something like "Features wanted for Fremantle release"?! Which would be things that are not showstoppers, but stuff which really would be nice to have and which depend on new Fremantle features.
E.g. for Conboy (note taking) this would be "Tracker integration". Also I think we should define "showstopper" a bit. In my opinion it's a bug or missing feature which absolutely prevents the app from running on Fremantle in the intended way. Other opinions?

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

By showstopper we mean e.g. 'Won't install due to Python conflicts between SDK and extras-devel. That is real showstoppers keepin away apps from end users.

Enhancement requests should be filed in the respective projects e.g. in their bugs.maemo.org products.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Please don´t give up! I am astonished as to why OpenOffice or similar software is not considered "impressive" for Freemantle. Doesn´t almost every serious S60 device have QuickOffice, or at least is compatible with QuickOffice? The ability to read and edit documents is something that would make the next device very, very useful. And useful is always good, and I would say, shiny on itself.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Exactly, my comments are not relevant if you do impress users. Quoting myself few posts above:

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Already spent 3 minutes of marketing with my project, let's see what happens :) .

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Would you call 'need to disable Hildon Input methods in control panel to avoid cursing the developer's ancestry several generations back' a showstopper ? 'Cause im in that sort of a situation... :(

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Open a thread and explain your specific problem in your specific project. :)

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Did that on maemo-developers, opened a bugs.m.o. ticket, even made a video :) (note that this is the 'fixed' version with stylus input disabled a la Fremantle, otherwise it's even worse :) ). Not much response, Antonio believes it has something to do with the python bindings but no maemo pyqt expert stepped up :(

PS. just to be clear - it's not the behavior that is the showstopper, but rather that you have to fiddle with HIM to get even this far.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

attila77, just put your packages in extras-devel, add your app to the list and keep it up to date so others (like me) can test. :)

If you have problems with Qt bidings vs Hildon this is not a thread to discuss them and I'm not a person that can help you (unless your app is just amazing and that is the single problem you have).

btw I have gone through the current list and there is still not much that could be promoted to real users today...

http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Star...her_great_apps

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Why, of course it's amazing ! :D But, jokes aside (it already is in extras-devel, honest !), my question was related to this thread (even though I managed to bury it under technobabble related to my project).

Does fiddling in your control panel (or God forbid in console) to make it functional qualify as a showstopper ?

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

BTW PLEASE change the color key/scheme. Using orange links on red and orange backgrounds does not make the project table too readable.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

attila77, is that a showstopper for you? If not, just add you app to the table.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I've always used the original Mediawiki theme. Feel free changing the colors at your preference.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Changed

Disclaimer: My previous employer once said to me 'Any company that let's you choose colours or design will go out of business'. Not kidding, he really did say that when he saw my colour choices. Of course, I always blamed his comment on the quality of my monitor :)

For me it isn't (=does not require SDK or anything not already available on the device), so, OK, will be adding it to the table as soon as have the how-to instructions/wiki page ready.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I just wanted to write a roadmap, but actually the description says "[...] planned for Fremantle [...]". There is no release date known which makes it a bit difficult to estimated which features will realistically be ready for the Fremantle launch. I mean there are many things I would _like_ to have ready, but my time is very limited, so it makes a big difference whether I have one or three month time...

This might look a bit pedantic, but I don´t really like to make promises which I cannot hold. How do you guys (gPodder, OSM2Go,...) are planning to do that?

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

added PasswordSafe
I suppose I'll have to write a roadmap one of those days ...

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

We are talking about a roadmap of intentions, not about commitments. One way to approach this is to list the features available in Diablo already and the ones you are aiming for say this year, listed by your priority. Signal those implemented already and testers will look for them.

I'd say this is a good way to tell to users and potential contributors what your application does and what improvements do you have in the pipeline.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Edited: I have created a subpage on the wiki status page and started to list things that can already be tested and things that are planned / need help: http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Stars/gPodder Just in case you want to use it as a basis for your own page.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

This is great! Thanks, Thomas.

Tim

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Added my roadmap too :)
http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Stars/Conboy

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

I'm just curious, did anyone maintaining a Fremantle Star already received help from Nokia? If yes, what was it?

Also I'm curious what the state of the original Fremantle Stars projects is? Does anyone have screnshots / infos about Fremantle versions of for example:
- Maemo Mapper
- Maemo WordPy
- Vagalume
- Evince
- Xournal
- Maemo Recorder

There many applications which are listed as Fremantle Stars here but have no entry on the new page here. This is not a rant :) I'm honestly just curious about the state of applications for Fremantle.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

The selected Fremantle Stars project can be found here:

http://maemo.org/news/announcements/...c4d7b308a308a/

Wiki is not up to date.

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Just went through the Fremantle Stars + GPodder to see if they would be good candidates for extras-testing. The result is not very good:

- OMWeather works but with Diablo UI (they are working on the Fremantle UI currently).

- Mauku widget works but the app is missing.

- eCoach, OSM2Go and GPodder have serious bugs that make them unusable (at least for me). Maybe it's just one bug and then the rest works but who knows.

- NumptyPhysics doesn't work at all (?)

- FBreader doesn't install due to the mentioned problem of dependencies.

- liqbase is missing. liqbase-playground doesn't count, really. It's a test bed but nothing you would recommend to normal users.

- Vagalume is missing completely.

It's Summer! Those of you with time available won't regret investing it now.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Star...her_great_apps

Re: Status of Fremantle stars and other interesting projects
 

Actually the OSM2Go problem I hit yesterday is now clearer.

There is still another annoying bug (OSM2Go unable to get location info on its own) but you can circunvent this by having the GPS awake by another app.

Therefore OSM2Go seems to be ready for extras-testing. Thanks Till!

PS: I will make a real test later today or tomorrow in the forest behind our house to see if I can add some of the walking paths...