Ask Nokia to create an .ISO disc image of an IT OS 2006 "Live" development disc!
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A request to Nokia to help preserve the development tools for IT OS 2006:
...And a request to you to help promote this request!



I would love to see Nokia release an .ISO image for a Live CD or Live DVD with all of the development tools for the last release of IT OS 2006 (49-2) for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. As time goes it will become more difficult to gather everything up to create an environment with all of the correct versions and builds of everything that is required.

An "official" .ISO image would freeze a moment in time and preserve all of the correct necessary tools all nicely pre-installed to run from the disc. It would also make future development easy and more approachable.

Our 770's won't just go away, and knowing that just popping in a disc can provide access to all of the official development tools would provide a way of insuring the ability to continue development far into the future without relying on specific downloads to remain available indefinitely.

This would be a good practice to implement for the final released build of any IT OS, such as the last builds of 2005, 2006, and someday 2007 and future versions. It would also make it easy for people who need to develop software but for whatever reason do not have the option of reloading their desktop or notebook PC with Linux to host development. It also does not require the user to install or purchase any kind of special emulation host software. With this approach, a single PC can be used to develop for any different IT OS without loading any software at all. This avoids any possible future inter-development-platform software conflicts.

If necessary, the .ISO images could be sold for a nominal fee to defray development costs of compiling and distributing the disc. The way that things are right now, everyone who wants to create such a disc has to do it themselves from scratch. Having a developer do it exactly once in the optimum configuration and then releasing it as an .ISO disc image would eliminate the many chances for each potential user to forget to install something, or mis-configure something. It would save many people countless hours and really create some good will.

It would also send a loud and clear message that even when products are supplanted by newer models, that every effort possible has been made to ensure that people can still easily continue to develop software in support of the older product. It would be a sort of official passing of the baton from corporate software developers to outside developers. The "code on CD" really says "final release of this version." :smile:

I'm sure hoping to be able to download such a "Live CD" or "Live DVD" someday.

Is there any chance that we might see something like this?

Thanks and best wishes to all!

One other thought: This approach also opens up a possible avenue for additional revenue. Because each CD/DVD (2005, 2006...) would be "frozen" and would not change, it would be possible to write books that would be single-version specific without having to worry about the impact of firmware update changes since there would not be any future changes for the version in question. Each book would deal with programming for the appropriate IT OS release in its final build version. The book could contain a second disc of sample source code. This "final release" reference could also be sold as an online download to avoid printing and distribution costs. There are cases such as in-house business applications where having a frozen system build and the "known quantity" that it offers can be very helpful.

Fellow 770 owners: Please help promote this request.

If this became a standard practice, N800 and future model owners would also benefit.

-=hackjackal=-

alternatively, a vmware player appliance image would also be a winner, perhaps based on DamnSmallLinux, as that way you could develop N770 or N800 applications using a Windows PC, a linux PC or (soon!) OSX.

this idea has met with moderate success in the zaurus world for original Sharp ROM Qtopia development using the odd mix of now obsolete tools needed!

Has anyone found a site where someone is working on this?

Ah yes ^^

I believe this will do it... I hope this is what you mean, anyway...

http://maemo.org/community/wiki/LiveCD

Scratchbox and all development tools are there, hope it helps!

That's odd....there's already a VMware image out there that has the v3.0 development environment installed on it. It can be found on VMware's site in their virt machine library.
Isn't that what you're looking for?

How about mixing the iso and QEMU that way it seems like it would be easier to develop in. It could even be put on a thumb drive and be portable.

I keep looking for an .ISO image but without luck.

I'm hoping to scrounge up enough parts for a bare bones PC that I can use to create it myself before the downloads become difficult or even impossible to find. That's the urgency that I see. As long as everyone can easily download things, it doesn't seem urgent. But, by the time that key pieces start to disappear and it "feels" urgent, it could be too late.

I have the same concern for "repository" based software installation. What happens when the repository of interest drops old entries, or just goes away? I like how we can download osso-xterm as the several different necessary pieces, save them on a flash card, and reinstall whenever we want without having to rely on a repository still being on line. Some sort of "Repository Scraper" program that would download everything and build a local copy of the repository files necessary for a specified program's later offline installation might offer some sort of insurance.

My advice to all: Download what you can while you can. I've been working with computers since transistors, teletypes, and then early PMOS multivoltage logic. Trust me, I know first hand all about how things change and get set aside and forgotten, or lost in the shuffle in the march ahead. If you don't get it in hand right now, odds are you'll wish that you had later, but procurement might not be an option by then. Maybe someone out there will have saved a copy of something that you need, maybe it will be somewhere like archive.org. Then again, maybe it won't. It's sort of like having to back up pieces of systems that aren't even ours. And if the information that we are "backing up" is really important to us, then it's up to us to make sure that it is preserved.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.

A USB flash drive based development environment would be useful, too. Some sort of download image like that would be nice, too. In the mean time, I'm reading and downloading until it all comes together and I can put together what I need.

Dude...

That post's colors... almost made my eyes bleed. Why the hell would you make text that horrible color??

Besides that, what are you talking about? And ISO image of what?? I already put a link to a full Maemo Live CD for development and Iball just said there is a pre-built VMware image. What else are you talking about?

You can install the Live CD to a flash drive too, if you put a little effort into it.

Thanks for the link to the Maemo 1.1 LiveCD. I believe that the VMWare appliance image is for Maemo 3.0. What I'm talking about is a Maemo 2.2 Gregale flavored Live Development CD. I'm downloading the bits and pieces and doing it myself.

Sorry that you didn't like the color scheme. As far as making your eyes bleed, I guess the intended humor was sort of lost on me. I've had to watch my wife slowly go blind. Not fun.

You can always switch to lynx and a green screen, though.