Iv'e done it.
Nothing but confusion resulted from that.

I'll try the big post from above later (:

If you want to use the virtual machine method then I found the Nokia Qt for Maemo developers guide very useful. It basically gives you a walkthrough of installing and setting up the virtual machine as well as previewing your app running on a virtual device in a Xephyr window. Lots of useful information in there. I got everything working by following that one guide, but I still think the Windows Qt and MADDE route is easier.

No actually his step 0 was to install the SDK on an existing install of Ubuntu. The SDK VM comes pre-configured on a ubuntu virtual machine, so that would cut out pretty much all of his steps...

4.
you will install QT on the scratchbox.

I completely agree with the sentiments of the OP, with one minor correction: Development isnt too hard; setting it up is too hard.. The plethora of options, and the fact that (it seems) you have to spend hours messing about setting the environment up, every guide advises a different way, and all the software is still settling, makes for an incredibly frustrating experience

I decided I'd use QtCreator
Downloaded it, installed it, wrote a hello world and it worked. Great.
Then I tried to get the app onto the N900

I was sold on the write-once-run-anywhere of Qt. "It's java, but in c++" I thought.
Ah, no it isnt. It has to be compiled for the device, it isnt interpreted by a vm (or whatever)
So.. How do we compile for the N900 arm cpu, from windows QtCreator?

Well, simplest way, I guess, would be just to install the compiler on the N900 - it's a computer after all.
Wasted: 4 hours of messing with stuff trying to get libqt4-maem05-dev package to install, failing, and then finding out that the N900 is too slow CPU to compile apps anyway. I still dont understand that; how can a 600mhz cpu be too slow to compile an app, yet my 800mhz laptop (at its lowest stepping, 1600 at its highest) will be just fine?
Whatever, the dev libs wont install on an N900 because of broken dependencies so we give up on that notion (probably noone is fixing it because they are all of the opinion that the N900 is too weak)

OK, ask around a bit more.. Other options: scratchbox or madde
Really cant be bothered dual booting/vmware my laptop just to get a dev env that will compile a project. Try madde instead

2 hours later

Oh, MADDE is still on 4.5.3 - get some good help off the brains on IRC, harry passes over a 4.6.2 stab (unofficial) for madde but it has serious issues and QtC rejects it.
Download QtC source code, read it
Find out why QtC is rejecting, fix the issues with the 4.6.2 stab, attempt to make it go again - QtC no longer rejects it, but thinks the maemo built 462 hack is a desktop target, so it's still going to build the wrong apps anyway

Figure I'll try 4.5 as shipped, because it's supposed to work.. maybe I'm not going to lose that much functionality. Maybe 4.5 has everything I want anyway.
Load it in, link it up to QtC options, great. It looks like it's going to work
Nip into the project build settngs.. add it as a.. oh.. it's not there.
Maybe it's because I havent set up the N900 as a device yet..
Download Mad Developer, set it up, can't get the SSH keys working, no detail in any guides, so stick to password mode.. back into build settings.. and Qt 4.5.3 STILL isnt there

Maybe I hosed my setup by having 2 copies of QtC and a MADDE with 4 copies of qmake dotted around, but I wanted the 4.6 dev ability..

So after 9 hours of faffing with QtCreator I still can't make the damn thing build an ARM binary


I realise that cross platform is a challenge, but that's kinda what Qt's raison d'etre is, no? Having it work out of the box for the platforms it's bridging would be a good thumbs up for me

I'm still avoiding scratchbox, to the point where I'm trying to use MADDE as a kind of N900 terminal emulator, to build the apps manually, bollocks to the QtCreator integration at the moment


-

I appreciate that this is all new, and stuff is moving along at such a lick that it's hard to keep a guide accurate for even a few days, but the crux of the issue is:

If Nokia want thousands of apps in their app store, and the Maemo community wants to be alive with the buzz of development, a developer shouldnt be spending days of his life messing about, setting up the damn IDE!, he should be just doing:

Go to website
Select operating system
Download IDE
Write program
Select target platform
Build
Deploy

because this will fill the app store, and set the community on fire with creativity


I'm back off to my tinkering, because I do enjoy it and it's helping me learn about a lot of stuff under the hood, but really.. it's all too hard, painful and time consuming for the normal, sensible people who give up sooner

I reverted all my efforts at getting 4.6 to work in madde, and went with the default guide as specced in the wiki. Not sure what pitfalls await me now, given that my write and debug env is 4.6 windows, and my deploy env is 4.5 - just have to find some documentation that tells me what's new in 4.6 and avoid it.

I'm sure that 4.6 support will be along soon, and if I run into coding that needs the 4.6 libs.. maybe have to go the scratchbox route..

I'm having problems in the supossedly easiest part of the tutorial

When trying to run the hello project, if I do ./1 it says the file doesn't exist. If I do ./1.pro it says I don't have the required permissions.

What am I doing wrong?

It sounds like you havent compiled the app?

A link to the tutorial youre following would be helful

If you think that setting up the environment is hard... Wait until you want to package and release your application in the repositories. For me, that was the hardest part. It was a real pain. Once you succeed, it's ok (or so I think). Anyway, don't give up! Eventually, it will work...

I didn't have trouble settign scratchbox up, but OTOH I have made it many times (been doing this since 770 times...).

Debian packaging can indeed be tedious but OTOH requiring the developer to spend an extra effort on making sure all dependencies etc are properly listed allows the users have much smoother experience when installing.

Thus spending two extra hours of developer time is easily worth saving a minute of each users time.