Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

One holdup for making more applications available is that it takes forever for developers to get programs compiled on the Maemo servers. Things that should take minutes take hour+. This really impedes the workflow for developers, so projects that should be done in an afternoon take a week instead...

A big cause of this is the actual servers building the applications (and hosting things like "brainstorm") are overloaded and sloooooow.

Nokia knows this, and supposedly was getting set up with a new ISP--in October. Will this happen before Christmas? Spring/Fall? 2012?

Let Nokia know you would like to see things sped up... As more users start using the N900, things are just going to slow down *more* if they don't get on the ball with this.

You can vote for this bug as one way to let them know.
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5818
https://bugs.maemo.org/votes.cgi?act...5818#vote_5818

A bit more info here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/ISP_Move

Thanks!

-Jeff
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

That's a bit unfair, as the guys working on this do not postpone it purposely to save money or something like that.
I hope that it goes live this month. Also see http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/December_09

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

That page says it's 2% done and "Work started. The first machines are being installed. Linked to ISP move."

See also:
Checking November:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/November_09

Identical text: "Work started. The first machines are being installed. Linked to ISP move." It also reports 2% being done.

In October,
http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/October_09
"Servers will be available in November only. "

-Jeff

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

So... Maemo developers can't compile their code locally? I'm confused...

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

A night's worth of holdup is next to nothing when compared to the -testing one.

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

Yeah, it definitely is confusing... "Must compile apps on Maemo Servers" sounds like a "must distribute app through app store"

WHY?

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

"Extras repository process definition" in the wiki may answer some of your questions.

And it is not required that an application be compiled by the autobuilder to be included in Extras. That's only a requirement for "free", and there's also "non-free" for closed source software.*

* Free as freedom, not as in beer.

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

You can compile locally and install it on your own fone, for example, but if I want to make a package available for testing in extras-devel, I have to upload the source files to the build server, it gets built there, then pushed into extras-devel. I can't upload binary/pre-compiled .debs.

I also saw in IRC that the build box is qemu-arm (!). Here's it compiling erlang, which has taken something like 16 hours (and still running):

As a point of reference, the guy that submitted the package can compile it in 8 hours on his N900!.


-Jeff

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

Okay, this makes sense now. Thanks.

Re: Want more apps? Vote for this bug
 

Isn't it sbox+sbdmock? It will use qemu-arm-user _only_ for build tools that are not in any devkit/toolchain. That doesn't include C/C++ compilers, but of course may include Erlang compilers.

More hardware won't fix this (but will help). Allowing to upload new devkits to the autobuilder would fix that, but would open another can of worms, so...