Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Hi There,

I'm a linux developer and new to Maemo5. Will receive my N900, hopefully.

I've successful installed the SDK and have some fun.

Maybe a dump question. Do we have an option to install
a development environment on the N900 itself ?

So i am able to compile software on the device itself ?

Best regards

Sacha

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

There's always python...

I'd be interested in developing that way. The dev environment takes an awful lot of space, though.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I develop for Mer, on a smartq5 with Mer installed, so it might be possible for Maemo as well. I think the easiest way to start is to create a large enough ext2/3 filesystem on the device (can even be done in a loop device on the FAT32 partition), copy a completely installed SDK filesystem from there, and chrooting into it. There might be some work needed for getting the arm binaries of the compiler.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I assume vi is available, right. Lots of things could be done with straight Python code, especially if there is a port of the ncurses package. But, yes, for GUI development you are better off doing that on the desktop. Could be fun though.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

There are people who develop right on the device itself - apparently they had a long commute. :)

vi is available and if you don't like python you have perl on the device as well.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

And if you write shell scripts, like me, developing on-device is pretty much a requirement!

I've successfully packaged the fremantle version of my easy-chroot package on-device using py2deb, and then uploaded to the autobuilder on-device, too!

I use leafpad for text file editing.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

leafpad you sissy, learn vi, it will take you 15 minutes and youll always have an editor on any uinix system, or at least 99% of them

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Yes, please see sbrsh documentation.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

On diablo you can install gcc and a few other tools too, so c and c++ development are also probably quite do-able for on-n900 hacking.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

<religious flame>

Someone has just uploaded qemacs as well to extras-devel, so you don't have to learn that crazy modal editor vi. :P

</religious flame>

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Well ... There's 32Gb available (yes, only 1 or 2Gb for installed apps but there will be a way to get around it, right?).

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Now this is cool; I like doing minor-ish CSS work on my N97, but developing an app on the device, yea, that's innovative in my book. You devs rock.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Honestly, a dev app like Visual Studio or Mono Develop would be an absolute wonder on the N900...

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Use pygtkeditor to edit and launch your python scripts.
Use py2deb to prepare your package.
Use MicroB to upload to the autobuilder.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I have in the past built "proper" projects on my n810. just add
the sdk repository, install build-essentials, ./configure and
make. mind you g++ is
slow slow slow (and mysteriously it seems that the code it
produces is also
slower??).

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I have set up a build environment on the N900 based on the scratchbox rootstrap and used this to build debian packages on the N900 itself.

The build environment is installed onto a 8GB SD card that is formatted in ext3 and is executed in a chroot environment.

I found that Ruby 1.9.1 would not build and run correctly in scratchbox in armel mode and caused the system to hang. Compiling direct on the N900 works great and allows use of compiler flags which are probably not supported by QEMU. The package run fine on the N900 but not within scratchbox .. I guess that QEMU does not emulate the arm-cortex-a8 quite right ??

anyway since I cannot load the package onto maemo-extras I have put it here if anyone would like to try it out.

deb http://repository.realitybites.eu/ fremantle free
deb-src http://repository.realitybites.eu/ fremantle free

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I used to play with PyGTK on the N8x0, and Khertan did some real apps that way. I guess the same should be possible on the N900 with pyQt... only better :-)

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Comming for a CompSci noob with only java experience, would compiling on device like realbite provide better performance than cross-compiling? I am guessing this difference is negligible, but you never know.

I have done simple python and bash on my n810. Also I installed gcc once to compile a mouse driver. Huge 20mb download though.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

At the request of Stskeeps, I have taken the Maemo 5 SDK rootstrap and made it into a 1.1 GB image file (exactly like my Easy Debian image). I have posted the gzipped version on my server:

maemo-sdk.img.ext2.gz

On your N900:

• Download and unzip this in your /home/user/MyDocs directory.
• Install easy-chroot from the extras-devel repository
• Make an SDK directory:
  
  Code:

  ---

  sudo mkdir /sdk

  ---

• chroot into the SDK:
  
  Code:

  ---

  sudo qchroot /home/user/MyDocs/maemo-sdk.img.ext2 /sdk

  ---

• develop and compile on-device!

Use a subdirectory of the /home/user directory to do your development in, so the final files are available outside the chroot.

EDIT: Maybe I should use realbite's environment instead?

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Thanks a lot for your message. You solve two of my biggest doubts in one go. As a Linux-only software craftsman since '93, who now uses Ruby for 90% of his work, I find this "phone" now more appealing than ever. I would certainly keep the phone connected to my work PC via USB and access it with SSH while at home. We are talking 32G! I recently worked for a project which reminded me how nimble Linux can be. Kernel plus X plus a couple of apps easily running off a half-a-Gig USB pen. I believe serious development can take place on the phone itself.

Can you give me an idea of how long it took for the compilation of Ruby?

Also, has anybody tried to run X apps on another display? Like, having the SMS management application running on your desktop screen, for example.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Just a fyi, I see ruby 1.8 in extras testing. You may not need to compile it. Enable ET and then do an apt-get ruby1.8 and ruby1.8-dev

Nathan

Nathan

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I have seen that. But, first of all, ruby 1.9 has a sharp increase in performance w.r.t. 1.8. And then, while I am no Gentoo user, I like to compile by myself all key elements that I use for developing. You learn a lot in the process. On my four-core desktop it takes less than a minute to compile Ruby. Even if I were to wait 5 minutes for compiling it on the maemo device, I believe it is time well spent.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Sorry I didn't even know 1.9 was released. More of a c/c++,php, and learning Python type guy. ;-)

I noticed 1.8 because I compiled Swig earlier today for the extras and I was trying to make sure swig supported to all the languages that have been ported so far to the n900/sdk.

Nathan.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

hi, as the thread's topic states almost exactly what i was looking for, as ,for some reason, my computer crashed and my first ever project i was working on is in complete halt when just about to finish and that the only device l have now which works is my n810, i, very CURIOUSLY, am wondering if it is, at all, possiible to have those maemo5 sdk and scratchbox on my n810's diablo or with qole's easy-debian installed. thanks.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

You can upload it to extras-devel which was built explicitly for this type of software. It would be great if you uploaded it there then many more devs might get a chance to see it and use it. :)

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I have installed synergy on my N810 and while I have not yet created a package for the N900, I am fairly certain it should just work. The leads me to believe that you can run X on another display.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I agree, my problem though is that while the X86 version compiles fine, the ARMEL version hangs scratchbox (while running miniruby ) although it compiles fine on the N900 itself. I think that if I upload it onto the build queue for extras-devel that it might cause someone to curse if it hangs the server.

Maybe someone has any idea for some special ARMEL gcc flags that can get the compile through scratchbox ??

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Are you planning on creating Ruby Hildon bindings for Fremantle?

And were you at the summit? I tried to find you and give you a bottle of Salmiakkikossu, but failed :(

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Thanks, Salmiakkikossu .. that is a new one to me .. yep I was there in the crowd .. sorry I missed you with your bottle ( i think ?).

I have just compiled the gtk+ bindings and am looking at the qt4 bindings at the moment. Seeing that Nokia is heading the QT way I guess that I wont be putting too much energy into the hildon bindings.. but it would be useful still to have many of the osso bindings.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Can you upload this somewhere?

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

I use py2deb to build my own packages on my n900:)
and pygtkeditor to edit source ... :)

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Hi,

My first post here... So hi all!

One simple question. What are the minimal steps all steps, which I have to complet to do some development python develoment with n900 itself? I just want to write some little scripts and programs, and may be package them for distribution. I have tried to find how-to or tutorial for that, but I havent found.

Second question: is it possible to access phone functions, like SMS-sending from python scripts?

Thx,

-j

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

You had the answers to both questions on your screen while typing that message :-)

Answers to first question are in Khertan's post just above yours : install his pygtkeditor and py2deb packages, they will pull in python for maemo (pymaemo) as a dependency, and you will have all you need.

For the second question, at the top of the screen you have links to "development", "downloads" and "community". It takes a bit of searching to find the python stuff, which is not yet very up to date for Maemo5, but eventually you will hit the right place to ask :

https://garage.maemo.org/mailman/lis...emo-developers

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Ok, thx! I have been a little bit confused, I have problems to find stuff here. :)

So, if I want to ask something spefic about developing with python, that mailinglist is right place to ask? Not this forum?

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Concerning the bindings for python ... Most of them are done by the PyMaemo team :

http://pymaemo.garage.maemo.org/

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Well understood, no problem ! Did you also spot the "Thanks" button at bottom right of each post ? That's part of the game :-)

There are plans to lay bridges between the two, but as it is not currently the case, it doesn't hurt to ask in both places. There are more "real" developers on the mailing lists, but also savvy people on the forum who are not subscribed to the MLs. Just ask away, at least you're in the right section ! :-)

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Hi,

I've done a build environment based on the scratchbox armel rootstrap too but I want to use it with qt4.6.
Everything works fine but libqt4-maemo5-dev.
When I try to run /opt/qt4-maemo5/bin/qmake, I have that answer : I tried with easy-debian and with the sdk-image qole gave here too but same answer.
What's wrong ? I'm trying to recompile libqt4-maemo5-dev on the device now. I'll tell you if it works :/

edit : qt4.5.3 qmake works fine
edit2 : 20 minutes waiting only for a ./configure that has failed... qt4.6 is not for me yet

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

Could you make available an image of this environment, or perhaps a HOWTO on how to build such an environment?

--denis

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

If you want to make your own image:

1. Grab the most recent rootstrap image from the repository. At the time of this post, it is maemo-sdk-rootstrap_5.0_3.2010.02-8_armel.tgz.

2. Make an empty image file and format it using my instructions from this old post. You can do this on any computer.

3. As root, mount the empty image file, cd to the root of the mounted image, and untar the bootstrap into the image. This can also be done on any computer.

4. Unmount the image.

5. Use Easy Chroot (or do it the hard way if you insist) to chroot into the image! Remember to install the Nokia Binaries.

Re: Developing on the N900 itself ?
 

you could also create a bootable Maemo5 without the 256mb limit using the Moebian scripts
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=95
and install the SDK on it