You guys have a big lump of new stuff to digest, in the form of the alpha SDK. Take your time and do it right.

I'm glad you brought it up! You're right, we do need updates to our packages. I've been looking for volunteers to help out with this and I'm sure you (or anyone else, as it's pretty simple if you know how to use UNIX) can sacrifice a little time here and there to help bring Mer packages based on Fremantle packages up to date with the code drops.

Basically, a summary of the common-with-Fremantle packages and the version differences can be found here

To do something about a package not being up to date, it is fairly simple:

Make yourself a launchpad.net account, and upload your SSH keys and install Bazaar.

Grab the source package the Mer package is based on, and the new one from fremantle. diff -ruN them, and save the diff.

Then:
* bzr branch <lp:something listed in table>
* cd into the checked out directory
* apply patch from before (patch -p1 < patchname probably) , fix it if it doesn't apply cleanly (watch out for configure and autoconf generated things)
* bzr add any added files (avoid .rej and .orig, bzr status is a good tool.)
* dch -m -i , and add your personal log message. Call it mer version + 1.
* bzr commit -m "your personal log message"
* bzr push lp:~yourusername/m-r/packagename
* Ideally, bzr export <some dir> lp:~yourusername/m-r/packagename , cd <some dir> and try to dpkg-buildpackage -b it.
* Point us to the branch and we'll put the branch in the repository and build it.

Now, you've done a small but necessary job to help bring Fremantle components to Mer, and to your N8x0 (or 770) and you can feel good about having contributed to this community effort.

Wow, you and I have a different idea about "simple" and "small".

Can we do this from Any Linux (x86) distro or do these steps have to be taken from within a particular development environment/cross compiler?
(Can I do this from my Ubuntu machine at home?)

Thanx,

desiv

Yes, you can do this on your ubuntu machine at home - for building i recommend (ab)using a Mer VMDK and apt-get install build-essential -

Most patches apply cleanly, though, you will most likely see patch failed in debian/changelog, is fairly easy to fix, just add the items from .rej without the +'s in the front and add an according version above it using dch..

Thanks for wanting to help out with this - I do this by hand every SDK release or when there's a new version out and X packages times 20 minutes does add up.

I'm looking forward to when the UI secrecy is over, so we can start pulling patches directly from source trees again like it is on stage.* with some packages..

Thanx.
No problem using a VMDK, so I'll take a look as soon as I get a chance...

desiv

I have a serious problem with mine. I was trying to install Mer through the instructions from the Mer-wiki site, with the installer on my 810 and then it starts repeatedly to reboot after I have done the second reboot. After the first reboot, the "Install Mer" wasn't in the Utilities. So I couldn't install Mer.

Now I don't know how to come back to my original version which is the newest one.

Please help, you guys are doing a great job out there, but I am just a n00b to Linux. I am trying hard to learn and understand.

Sorry if my post was not clear. I meant that it is no big deal to miss 0.10, it is just an arbitrary deadline you set yourself.

Looking forward to 0.11!

I have installed Mer 0.9 on my N810 and it looks good. I have installed LXDE and it works quite OK. It seems little snappier than Ubuntu.
Several notes:
- keyboard seems to be broken, enter does not work (the one on d-pad works though) and Fn does not work. I think it is just missing a keymap or somehow using PC keymap.
- apt-get update/apt-get upgrade installed and upgraded ton of packages. one of the packaes is libc6 and upgrading it failed when it was trying to copy some man file to ./usr/man/man5/...


update ...
there is no /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr in Mer, so it does not know about Nokia specific keyboards

I think it has to be copied from Maemo

then in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols
xkbcomp -lhlpR '*' -o ../symbols.dir

and integrated into rules dir to base

sprite:/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules# grep nokia *
base: nokiarx44 * = nokia_vndr/rx-44(%l)
base: nokiasu8w * = nokia_vndr/su-8w(%l)
base.lst: nokiasu8w Nokia SU-8W
base.xml: <name>nokiasu8w</name>
xorg: nokiarx44 * = nokia_vndr/rx-44(%l)
xorg: nokiasu8w * = nokia_vndr/su-8w(%l)
xorg.lst: nokiasu8w Nokia SU-8W
xorg.xml: <name>nokiasu8w</name>
then nokiarx44 has to be used in xorg.conf
Option "XkbModel" "nokiarx44"

but it still doesnt work for me

It looks like the keyboard problem is newer xkb-data from Ubuntu overwriting xkb-data from Mer. Manual package install fixed it for me in Mer-0.9 and Mer-0.10 image I got from stskeeps has got it fixed.

After I have installed LXDE there is plenty of RAM (around 50MB) left over for apps. Hildon is terribly bloated. I started removin all packages with "hildon" in the name.

Now the next step, to get wifi working with wpa_supplicant.

Mer is awesome, thank you guys.