[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Some questions about MaemoMapper (or installing software in general)

[From: Carl Worth]

So my work with the maemo stuff to this point has been mostly
performance-testing of cairo. That's good and all, but I also can't
help wanting to play with this fancy little gadget I've got.

One thing that looked really interesting to me when I saw people
playing with it at GUADEC this summer was MaemoMapper. I'm keen on
augmenting that to provide an interface for a fun little GPS game I've
been playing lately called MinuteWar[*].

So a first question I have is what it would take to be able to plug a
USB GPS device into the n770. Obviously there's a cable issue at least
as both devices have the "little" USB connectors on both ends. I can
probably work that out if the hardware/software will allow this
connection to work, (since I'm too lazy/cheap to go chase down and
purchase a bluetooth GPS).

Did I see correctly in the wiki that if I enable r-d mode that I can
use the n770's USB as a host USB connection?

Second, in the most install which I played with for just a few minutes
tonight, (before wiping it out trying to get CPU transparency working
as per my earlier post), I saw the "tableteer" thing which I don't
think I had seen before, and just a few browsy clicks later I found
"garage" and then "oh yeah, here's that MaemoMapper I'd been hoping to
try out".

So I clicked away and I was happy to see it try to install, but
disappointed to see it fail, (details said it was missing an sqlite0
package).

We don't really expect random packages to be installable since they
will have dependencies like this. And that's why this lovely
Debian-like packaging system is in place with this lovely
ApplicationManager GUI to take care of all those dependency issues.

So, my question is, why aren't cool things like MaemoMapper in a
maemo.org-hosted repository along with all their dependencies? Or if
they are, why isn't that repository configured by default in the
standard install? It would be really nice if I could explore the
software that's being written by the community by simply clicking into
the ApplicationManager and having things install automatically.

(Yes, I love shell access, and I love that I can type apt-get and
manually configure /etc/apt/sources.list, but I really shouldn't have
to do all that just to start playing with what the community is
doing.)

Otherwise, I'm stuck just playing Marbles and MaemoBlocks and I know
this gadget just has to be good for an awful lot more than that... ;-)

-Carl

[*] http://minutewar.gpsgames.org
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