Maemo SDK+
 

Just upgraded Ubuntu to 9.1. It has the scratchbox2 package. Is there a package available to install maemo 5 SDK+?

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

Use Scratchbox 1.x instead. Manual is here: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...K_Installation

It is Ubuntu 9.10 btw.

There may be some documentation flying around about SDK+ but may be out of date, and x86-32 only.

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

I am using scratchbox2 and it is fine, way better than scratchbox1.

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

I am using Scratchbox 1 and it is fine, way better than Scratchbox 2.

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

Hi,

if you have the maemo-SDK+ package installed, follow these steps:

1) type:
2) and then type:
This will show you the following options:
3) Now select one of the Fremantle rootstraps. Unfortunately up to now is besides the Beta SDK just the minimal-rootstraps for Fremantle supported.

4) Decide what you like more to continue the discussion with fms and qwerty12 ;)

Cheers Daniel

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

Thanks for the info. My target device is N900. I need to rewrite some windows mobile app to work with the N900. I need to do a porting of the app asap. Let me know what to do to start developing under maemo and ubuntu 9.10.

I was talking to one of the developers at Nokia Chicago meetup and I was informed that they are using gtk+, and gstreamer. They added that development is possible with QT3/4 . I am a little bit weary on what to do and I need help that bad.

Daniel, you seem knowledgeable on this, can you give me a helping hand?

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

Scratchbox 1 is ":much" easier to get "support" for. Very few people seem to use SB2 yet. All documentation is geared for SB1. So when you run into a issue; you will find people able to answer a SB1 question, where you might have to figure it out in SB2. However, SB2 fixes a lot of "wrong" designs in SB1.


[quote]I was talking to one of the developers at Nokia Chicago meetup and I was informed that they are using gtk+, and gstreamer. They added that development is possible with QT3/4 . I am a little bit weary on what to do and I need help that bad.

I'm not Daniel, but I'll try and put my .02c into the conversation. ;-)

The N900 has a Community port of Qt 4.5 and will have a Nokia official port of 4.6 shortly (actually you can pull down the 4.6 alphas and the release 4.5's right now). Neither edition is fully "optimized" for the n900's interface (i.e. it requires a bit more work in Qt to make it look like a native application) than GTK.

The prior generations of Maemo OS and the current OS (Fremantle), are primarily GTK+ Hildon extensions as the primary supported toolkit/interface. So many more developers are used to GTK programming.

However the next version of Maemo OS (Harmatten) will be primarily Qt based. GTK will be taking a back seat and will be a "community" supported, rather than Nokia supported.

So the decision you need to make is which toolkit you want to use; GTK+ has _much_ more documentation for Maemo and more developers using it on the Maemo platform. However Qt has a wide amount of documentation on other devices -- if you feel comfortable doing a lot of googling you can find the answer to most things for Qt. Qt is cross platform from the ground up and is where Nokia is going with the product in the following versions. They would like to get to a point to allow both Maemo and Symbian developers to be able to make applications for both phones with pretty much the same code base.


If you are starting from scratch; Qt in my opinion is the better bet (as it is the now and the future); but since you mentioned you needed to port it ASAP; GTK might be a lot faster to get going as their is more examples and docs for the Maemo platform using GTK.

But, you _might_ have to port it to Qt on either Harmatten or the OS that follows, depending on how well GTK is supported, and how much you want your app to act like a "native" applications.

Nathan

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

When I started to play with the SDK, using scratchbox 1, I was very disappointed with the way it works. It is just too much different from how I personally prefer to work. I was even surprised to find out there are people more familiar with working that way than just using a cross-compiler in a "normal" environment. And I go as far as to blame the quirkiness of the classical SDK for slowing down the speed maemo could be evolving!... :mad: I don't say there should be only one way to develop, but SDK+ took/is taking too long to appear. :(

Lucky me, SDK+ based on scratchbox 2 is arriving... :cool: But to me using it is more of a vanity thing. In your case I would recommend, as Nathan did, the most vanilla installation possible, so go with scratchbox 1, unless you have a very hard time with it, like I did, and decide to face the consequences of moving to the "experimental" alternative. Regarding Qt, I don't have experience with it, but afaik the existing packages are pretty much reliable.

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

Hi linuxkid,

as you have seen scratchbox 1 or 2 is mostly a matter of taste. But right now I guess scratchbox 1 is the safer bet. Two reasons for that:

1) SB2 doesn't support yet the full dev environment, but just the minimal dev, why you could run into problems developing on it for Fremantle. Or you go with the Beta SDK, which is not a good option either.

2) SB1 is right now the most stable dev environment for Fremantle.

But this is just a snapshot of the situation right now, but as you need the stuff pretty fast, I would suggest you as well to take the SB1. The installation instructions and further descriptions of the SDK are part of the whole documentation.

GTK or Qt depends as well on your taste and further on your experience. As Nathan said, Qt is the path to go if you are thinking about cross platform and future maemo devices. If you are used to python, GTK is the better path, as the support for it is quite good. That there is not a lot maemo-specific documentation for Qt, I don't see so much as a problem. If you don't use too much your own stylesheets it adapts pretty nicely to the UI of Fremantle. And for the rest, like Nathan said, the documentation of Qt is really good. But you have to keep a bit the look and feel of the UI in mind while developing the application.

If you have more concrete questions keep on asking ;)

Cheers Daniel

Re: Maemo SDK+
 

I have both installed in multiple environments. I can say that native Scratchbox 2 is slower (at least for building big projects), can't be used directly on non-debian based linuxes (and the armel target is VERY slow in a virtual image).

If Maemo 6 will introduce Scratchbox 2 as its main SDK environment, we (at least me on openSUSE) are in trouble :)