I was thinking....I have never ported an app before, however would like to know what is involved in doing so. So my thought process is....

Maybe if there are a few noobs who would like to learn, and perhaps a few folks willing to help out and instruct.... well maybe we could start a user group to port apps.

I was thinking we could make a list of apps we would like to try and port. Make a poll to vote what should be ported first. Then attempt to port the app.

Maybe even document the process as we go. Heck ... could even use google wave for the process.

If this is something folks are interested in doing, I'd like to go about it the correct way and port them optified.

I dont know what's entailed in doing this or even what type of environment is needed to port apps, but I'm willing to give it a go.

Anyway...just a thought.

Ok...nothing yet.
So any advice?
Is there any documentation someone can toss me so I can at least review whats involved?

There's the wiki page: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...ion_to_Maemo_5.

I guess the "main" problem in porting complex applications is that most of the UI needs to be redesigned (finger UIs, no hierarchical menus, etc).

Note that I have no experience in this, I dabbled a bit at "hildonizing" a Python Glade application in Diablo (N800/N810), which was relatively simple, but it has just about no relavance for Maemo5 aka Fremantle.

I guess you should start with telling in what language(s) you would like to work on.

I am willing to help.
I know a lot of programming languages (VB6, Java, etc.)
I have an extensive knowledge in computers, and Windows, not that much in Linux tho.

Anyway, I was thinking to try and write an app for the N900, so I guess this will be the a good way for me to start.

Well.... I dont know any languages. I mess with code, but dont write it.
I know my way around Linux and have been using it for a while now. Maybe we could put what we know together and work something out.
Start off with something small....a small app to port. Maybe I'll get luck and learn to program doing this.
So should we be looking into the QT stuff?

Cool Thanks!

Depends what you're porting, I'd suggest asking on IRC and then waiting a bit to see what people have to say. On the same tack, I was thinking it would be worth writing a debianisation wiki page explaining how to either take a debian package and get it working under Maemo or setting up the debian stuff on a vanilla source package.

Debian's documentation on making a deb package from vanilla sources:
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

I think that is a very good idea. Is it just as easy as doing the usual configure, make, make install?

BTW I just noticed your name.....funny!

So, are we going to do anything?
if so, when?