Well ... There's 32Gb available (yes, only 1 or 2Gb for installed apps but there will be a way to get around it, right?).

Now this is cool; I like doing minor-ish CSS work on my N97, but developing an app on the device, yea, that's innovative in my book. You devs rock.

Honestly, a dev app like Visual Studio or Mono Develop would be an absolute wonder on the N900...

Use pygtkeditor to edit and launch your python scripts.
Use py2deb to prepare your package.
Use MicroB to upload to the autobuilder.

I have in the past built "proper" projects on my n810. just add
the sdk repository, install build-essentials, ./configure and
make. mind you g++ is
slow slow slow (and mysteriously it seems that the code it
produces is also
slower??).

I have set up a build environment on the N900 based on the scratchbox rootstrap and used this to build debian packages on the N900 itself.

The build environment is installed onto a 8GB SD card that is formatted in ext3 and is executed in a chroot environment.

I found that Ruby 1.9.1 would not build and run correctly in scratchbox in armel mode and caused the system to hang. Compiling direct on the N900 works great and allows use of compiler flags which are probably not supported by QEMU. The package run fine on the N900 but not within scratchbox .. I guess that QEMU does not emulate the arm-cortex-a8 quite right ??

anyway since I cannot load the package onto maemo-extras I have put it here if anyone would like to try it out.

deb http://repository.realitybites.eu/ fremantle free
deb-src http://repository.realitybites.eu/ fremantle free

I used to play with PyGTK on the N8x0, and Khertan did some real apps that way. I guess the same should be possible on the N900 with pyQt... only better :-)

Comming for a CompSci noob with only java experience, would compiling on device like realbite provide better performance than cross-compiling? I am guessing this difference is negligible, but you never know.

I have done simple python and bash on my n810. Also I installed gcc once to compile a mouse driver. Huge 20mb download though.

At the request of Stskeeps, I have taken the Maemo 5 SDK rootstrap and made it into a 1.1 GB image file (exactly like my Easy Debian image). I have posted the gzipped version on my server:

maemo-sdk.img.ext2.gz

On your N900:

• Download and unzip this in your /home/user/MyDocs directory.
• Install easy-chroot from the extras-devel repository
• Make an SDK directory:
  
  Code:

  sudo mkdir /sdk

• chroot into the SDK:
  
  Code:

  sudo qchroot /home/user/MyDocs/maemo-sdk.img.ext2 /sdk

• develop and compile on-device!

Use a subdirectory of the /home/user directory to do your development in, so the final files are available outside the chroot.

EDIT: Maybe I should use realbite's environment instead?

Thanks a lot for your message. You solve two of my biggest doubts in one go. As a Linux-only software craftsman since '93, who now uses Ruby for 90% of his work, I find this "phone" now more appealing than ever. I would certainly keep the phone connected to my work PC via USB and access it with SSH while at home. We are talking 32G! I recently worked for a project which reminded me how nimble Linux can be. Kernel plus X plus a couple of apps easily running off a half-a-Gig USB pen. I believe serious development can take place on the phone itself.

Can you give me an idea of how long it took for the compilation of Ruby?

Also, has anybody tried to run X apps on another display? Like, having the SMS management application running on your desktop screen, for example.