The information for those who want to start development for the N900 is almost hopelessly fragmented, disorganized, containing irrelevant, arcane information unneeded by some developers, etc.

I have been a C programmer for years, but just trying to start in ANY way to get something going writing for the N900, setup information gets more & more fragmented, abstruse, inaccurate, superseded but not corrected, massively time-consuming, & ultimately not worth it. You can waste DAYS just trying to bore down to find out what software you need for development, then trying to download it.

Today's example: after churning for an hour on alternately superficial then lengthy, needlessly detailed pages, an attempt was made to download Scratchbox, being led there via a link from who knows where. We get to:
http://www.scratchbox.org/documentat...oc.html#AEN132
updated /etc/apt/sources.list as directed, then on apt-get update in root terminal got:
Failed to fetch http://scratchbox.org/debian/./Packages.gz 404 Not Found

This is insane.
It comes after hours of sifting through Google Search, & endless branches into links to easter egg hunts on http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resou...s/Other/Maemo/, http://www.developer.nokia.com/info/...emo_5_SDK.html, http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...K_Installation, http://www.scratchbox.org/download/scratchbox-hathor/, http://www.scratchbox.org/documentat...oc.html#AEN132

Only somebody with luck or who is paid by the hour to pursue this would continue.

The Wiki model is useless for conveying beginning developer information. It contains old, outdated information that casual users cannot know is old & outdated, for purposes of use OR maintaining the information.

And it is ALL written, from the Wiki to corporate/project information pages not in the algorithmic form a user requires, but in the sling-it-all-in-the-junk-drawer departures that the DEVELOPERS OF THE SDK's must work in and use.

Someone who wants to install an SDK wants this information:
HOW TO INSTALL ON I386 DEBIAN-BASED BOX -> do A, do B, do C, etc.
HOW TO INSTALL ON I386 WINDOWS MACHINE -> do A, do B, do C, etc.
HOW TO INSTALL ON TIMEX SINCLAIR -> do A, do B, do C, etc.

This is how it is done instead:
TO INSTALL: do A if on a Debian based box, unless using a 64-bit machine in which case do B, Windows users will need to do C first then do B, next do B (except for 64-bit Debian based boxes), and do D for Windows 16-bit machines, do not do any of the above if E has not already been installed on any Linux machine, or all will need to be re-installed. If E has been installed, before installation of A it will be necessary to reconfigure E by downloading F and making the following changes in its configuration file....

It's insane. Creators of installation packages must think that way to create branching accommodations for various needs, but they are not the way algorithmic instructions need to be presented.

The Wiki approach just layers more hands on a self-obfuscating mess, and TMO posts, being of lengthy time frames & of unending pages of discussion & drama with accurate information for any given point in time sprinkled thinly through it & the current, accurate points indistinguishable from superseded & erroneous information, are not practical for final presentations of information.

I would like to propose that in the Developer talk section, someone create a post for setting up Development on particular system, with information presented algorithmically & not branching into other systems, the moderator sticky the post, & then the OP maintains that post. If in the event the OP disappears, the moderator should ask for someone else to maintain the post, & that person should copy & paste the previous post to a new post which will be stickied & maintained while the original sinks.

Discussion in the thread would be about error-correction & elucidation, & could all be ignored by someone looking for the information in the first post.

One thing multiple vendors of micro systems have started to do is to offer not just instructions on how to setup a system, but also offer a VDI for vmware-style systems. It makes things easier on developers (get one file, virtual-boot it, log in, and go...), and in many ways helps them out, since they don't spend time dealing with issues from someone trying to figure out issues with their environment.

Hasn't someone made a VDI for Maemo? I'd have sworn I saw one for MADDE out there at one point.

@woody14619,

Yes. You go here http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/maemo-d...-downloads.php, Click "I accept", and then download the SDK image (Lucid Desktop should contain everything). Then you unpack the .7z file and extract the vmware image (.vmx and .vmdk files)

The README file contains instructions of how to set it all up.

Documentation and tutorials (scratchbox, Eclipse/ESbox, etc.) can be found here:
http://library.maemodocs.nokia.com/fremantle/index.jsp

It's true that it's a mess, but in the end you can have an environment where gcc, make, etc. can be used to compile a program.. I have (so far) only tested compiling the N900 kernel, and it worked OK.

I followed this instruction on how to install scratchbox which was quite simple and straightforward.
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Commu..._for_beginners

Also a tutorial on how to use scratchbox to compile stuff would be a good addition to the information on how to install it, it is after all the next step to conquer after a installation

- - - - -
But now i cant compile for fremantle_armel , it is some libs that needs to be upgraded (Hildon and gtk) and i cant find the information on how to do that?
Anyone knows how to uppgrade the hildon+gtk stuff in scratchbox? I think i have seen a tutorial online about that, but now when i need it then i cant find it...

I could not agree more. The number of times I have tried to install scratchbox on my dual-boot win7/ubuntu AMDx2 64bit machine and failed, try as I might I can never get it installed. Or when I have managed to follow one of the many tutorials through to completion, then i am not sure what I am supposed to be looking at as pictorial diagrams are very thin on the ground too. So I have often retraced my steps to see if anything has been missed and re-reading the docs can have you bouncing around the multiple Tut's and threads again.

I want to learn how to create/port/do more (whatever) with the n900 but have never got past the first steps. This makes for one very a sad and frustrated minkin.