[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Porting applications for Maemo

[From: Kate Alhola]

I have been porting two GPS applications to 770, the gpsdrive
http://www.gpsdrive.cc and cumulus http://www.kflog.org/cumulus

The gpsdrive is GTK program and it compiles with litte hacking with
incompatible system headers ( some serial port stuff etc ).
It looks a like that problem is more in gpsdrive than maemo side.
Gpsdrive uses some features that are marked in headerfiles as obsolete
or bsd inherited.

It was easy to get running but to get it in real use needs to have
it integraded better with maemo environment. Use events generated by
770 keys to controll zooming etc and optimize the GUI for 770 screen size.
At the moment the layouts for PDA or PC are not most optimum.

The cumulus is qtopia application. Qtopia has all its own environment
and is also depending wery old qt2 series. I succeedes to isolate
qtopia functions to separate dummy classes or just included some
qtopia resource classes.

To more easilly port qtopia stuff it may be usefull to make some
kind of dummy qtopia layer. It is not impossible but needs some time.

The qt3 compiled without larger problems. Just the uic was hanging
or crashing with scratchbox/ARM compilation.There is some incompatibility
with qemu and uic. When made all uic stuff with scratchbox in i386 mode
i get qt compiled.

At the moment i found some open questions.

To connect GPS it needs USB serial port driver. The USB GPS modules
actually contains USB to serial chip like ftdi or prolific.
At the moment there is not at all in real device /lib/modules.
Most propably it needs to have module for usb chip unless it is
compiled into kernel.

Then i tried to take screenshots from real 770 device, I noticed that
it is listening the only unix domain socket so i can't grap screen with
external application. I also compiled xgrabsc to grab screen locally
but xgrapsc just makes the device to boot.


I will put first screenshots to www.katix.org when i succeed to get them.
I also try to get real GPS work with 770 and then i can release first
alpha versions of these ports.

Kate