I had outlined an idea in this thread and have set out to see how hard each piece of it would be. So far the initial results looks VERY promising.

I am currently running the Final Maemo 5 SDK, with several programs from the fremantle repository to "play" with it.


Here is a standard SSH connection to the scratchbox:

with full control since it is using ssh.

You can still either run the sh/bash session scratchbox inside the Linux VM Host window or through a SSH session from your windows desktop. Having a ssh session working perfectly outside means we can fully control the scratchbox stuff outside of the VM. That is very important, for my next part of the project!

And in this case the entire time I was playing with it, installing stuff from the repository and controlling it -- I had my Virtual PC minimized. Leaving me no need to unlock my mouse cursor or wasting my screen space showing the linux VM. I'm loving it!


And here is the holy grail of this message; Xephyr running on Windows XP linked to a running scratchbox session from inside the vm:


I installed a couple widgets, and here is me "playing" in Xephyr/Maemo running a game --


The good:
- Completely stable
- Speed is either the same or possibly faster
- Work flow is much smoother; no more having to unlock mouse from VM. (& Alt-Tab works!) and I can use all the programs like I would normal do, during development.
- You can mix and match programs inside and/or outside vm now. - Simple setup.

The bad:
- You do need to install some stuff on your windows side. Around 150 megs worth of stuff -- but it is all automatically installed for you, from one installer (and optionally one zip file).

The crazy:
- Maemo Fremantle development on my Windows Desktop!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!

If anyone is interested in this; let me know and I'll get some instructions put up on how to get it working. But either way; it is just plain COOL!

Nathan

That is ... really really nice. I've just recently started toying with the SDK and have so far been running the scratchbox as well as compiling etc via ssh and editing with winscp's inbuilt editor anyway, so the only thing I need to mess with inside the VM is Xephyr. It didn't even occur to me however to get it running outside the VM as well...

Thanks for the tip!

I knew SSH would work externally, in fact I made sure in my vm image to install sshd, and samba and configure them for external access.

It was actually because of something that SubCore said that made me decide to try getting this working. And I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Nathan.

Does this mean we can dev on windows without ubuntu and such?

Well, once you have it set up Ubuntu in the VM and done the initial tinkering, you only need to fire it up and have it running in the background. Besides that you essentially don't have to touch Ubuntu and such.

The scratchbox and all code is still running inside the VM, but you work with it from outside, in your Windows environment.

No, as nymajoak stated, the VM Ubuntu machine is still running. But instead of having to do everything inside the Gnome desktop of the linux machine you are able to "control" everything externally in your Windows desktop.

This technique basically allows you to start the VM running, and then minimize it. Then you can run a "batch" file in windows that will start a ssh session, and start xephyr in windows and then link the VM to your xephyr session. So then you are running everything from windows programs that will also behave like windows programs. You can alt-tab, move your mouse and interact with them as a normal windows program.

At this point because of the way the sdk works you have to run a linux host machine of some sort. My objective is to "windowize" (and simplify) this to hide it as much as possible for new windows developers. Those who are familiar with Linux this whole technique probably is not all that interesting too. But if I can make it better for the Windows developers, that is my goal. And on top of that it gives me a good excuse to "play" around and learn new things!

Nathan

+1 for an official request for instructions.

BTW have you looked into Portable Ubuntu Remix ? It basically allows you to run linux within windows using colinux, and supposedly runs much quicker/smoother, than a full VM.

Interesting idea -- I'll pull down it and "andLinux" and see how easily I can get the images working. I suspect based on the prior work I did with the Ubuntu VM that my simple scripts probably will probably port over pretty easily and they do all the "heavy" lifting right now. But what I am really attempting to focus on is getting Scratchbox 2 working... That I think will add a lot more to the picture.

Nathan.

Nathan , thanks for the VPC image for windows users. This is a great thing.

Is there any image you made as yet with the new Maemo 5 final SDK on the VPS as an image as yet ?
On the garage page I see the older one as of 9/15 - so assuming that does not include the Maemo 5 final SDK that just got release this month ?

Actually it does -- it is "self" updating image. Basically I use the garage project to host all the scripts. Pretty much every install step runs the svn update to pull the latest scripts. ;-)

As of last night, I had the new Final SDK scripts put into svn and integrated. (In fact the images above are from my VM machine built from scratch using the new version of the scripts)

However, I will be releasing a new vhd though because apparently I forgot to chmod some files on my final .02 release... Ergh... And they apparently are the first install script. ;-(

Nathan.