Developing Themes for the N900 Device & OVI Store
 

Hello Maemo Developers

I want to create and distribute themes for the N900 device in the OVI store and need to clarify a few issues. I need to create .deb files for distribution on OVI. From what I can make out from the Maemo theme forums, there are two ways in which to create your theme package (.deb).

The first is from using Urho Konttori's theme maker, but because this said to be a little bit buggy on Windows systems, I have chosen to avoid this software.

The more reliable route is through a blog post found in the forums. I can follow the steps quite easily. The bit that I need clarity on is the final packaging process. I need to upload the .dsc and .tar.gz files in order for the Maemo Extras administrators to approve and package my theme. This can take a little time. Is there any other way of creating the .deb file and installing it onto an N900 device for quick testing purposes? When you upload your files to the Maemo Extras area, your theme is open to anyone to download or use. Am I right in saying that there is a Creative Commons licence attached to submissions that basically puts your creation into the public domain & if so, how are you supposed distribute your content when your competitors can openly view your creations?

As I said, I am completely new to the Maemo platform and community and would appreciate any advice on the matters mentioned above.

Kind regards

Pixel-T

Re: Developing Themes for the N900 Device & OVI Store
 

Yes there is. Set up a SDK on linux machine and build the package there with following command:
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -tc

Re: Developing Themes for the N900 Device & OVI Store
 

Thanks for your swift reply D-livil! Is there any way to do this from Windows?

Re: Developing Themes for the N900 Device & OVI Store
 

Well yes and no :-D
I have a Windows -machine running Ubuntu via VMWare (virtual machine) and I've installed all the SDK tools in there. That way I can build things just like they are built in extras autobuilder. Good thing is that I can always have a copy of my "buildin enviroment" in USB-stick and run it any machine that has VMWare installed :)

Installing the SDK from scratch was a bit pain at first, but after reading the wiki about it it was pretty easy for complete linux-noob like me.