[maemo-community] PyMaemo (Python for maemo) alpha release for Fremantle

[From: Quim Gil]

Hi, moving this to maemo-community since I don't want to discuss the
technical aspect of the news but the news itself.

The fact of having Python bindings for Fremantle is very cool and I
think it would be worth an announcement in maemo.org

Until now the maemo.org announcements have been all written by Nokia
employees but it's about time for the community to take over that, don't
you think?

Quim

ext Anderson Lizardo wrote:
> [cross-posting to pymaemo-developers and maemo-developers]
> Hi,
> 
> We are pleased to announce the first (alpha) release of PyMaemo for Fremantle!
> 
> This new release is available through the extras-devel repository, see
> installation instructions in
> http://pymaemo.garage.maemo.org/sdk_installation.html#fremantle
> 
> What is it?
> ----------
> Python for Maemo (PyMaemo for short) main objective is to make possible
> to use Python programming language as the scripting and development
> language for maemo Platform, providing a better alternative for fast
> prototyping and programming in maemo environment besides the C
> programming language.
> 
> Python is for serious programming and to have fun. Python has a nice
> syntax, it is easy to learn and powerful enough for a vast range of
> applications, this is why we choose Python for Maemo.
> 
> What has changed?
> ---------------
> This release represents a major upgrade compared to previous ones. It
> contains the following changes:
> 
> * Updated versions of all packages, now matching the Debian Lenny
> stable release.
> * Custom packaging was dropped and now we use the standard Debian
> packages (plus maemo specific customizations). This means that PyMaemo
> packages should now be fully compatible with Debian, thus facilitating
> ports of existing applications from Debian.
> * Dropped python-gpsbt package, since libgpsbt does not exist on
> fremantle anymore.
> * Added ipython (not installed by python-runtime).
> 
> Known issues
> -----------------
> 
> * pyid3lib has been temporarily removed due to a missing -dev package
> on the SDK (see maemo bug #4235 [1])
> * python-gstreamer is currently missing; there is one being maintained
> by maemo multimedia team on the SDK repository, we should check
> whether it should be just uploaded to extras-devel.
> * python-hildon lacks some of the new API for fremantle. For this
> alpha release, only the deprecated API (not available on the C API)
> was removed.
> * Initial experimentation on actual OMAP3 hardware (beagle board
> running fremantle [2]) shows that overall installed size (as installed
> by the "python-runtime" metapackage) of PyMaemo is around 43 MB. For
> the final release, we intend to reduce more this size.
> * The packages were tested on actual hardware, but only to verify
> installation. We expect the community to provide feedback on this
> alpha release and report any runtime issues.
> 
> This release is supposed to be compatible with previous releases. If
> you have any issues regarding building your Python application on
> fremantle, feel free to report it on the pymaemo-developers mailing
> list [3].
> 
> Acknowledgments:
> -----------------
> Thanks to everybody who helped making this release possible.
> 
> Bug reports, as always, should go to our Bugzilla [4]. Use our mailing
> list [3] for support, feedback or suggestions.
> 
> References
> --------------
> 
> [1] https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4235
> [2] http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/
> [3] https://garage.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/pymaemo-developers
> [4] https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/?atid=229&group_id=40&func=browse
> 
> Thanks,