[maemo-developers] suspendprocess - poor man's power save

[From: Aniello Del Sorbo]

----- Original message -----
> On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 17:58, Robin Burchell <viroteck at viroteck.net>
> wrote:
> > 
> > Anyway: this was pretty much in keeping with my idea: move it into the
> > task switcher (hildon-desktop/other) so that applications which are
> > moved to background are stopped (unless they signal for whatever
> > reason that they need to be kept running, but I'm not even sure that
> > is necessary: if you really need to do background processing
> > constantly, why do it in a GUI application?)
> 
> I suggested something similar three years ago (wow, Maemo's old ;-))
> and the reaction was less favourable:
> 
>         http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/maemo/users/26337
> 
> For example, Igor Stoppa wrote:
> > 
> > You are proposing a shortcut that is encouraging crappy code to be
> > written, since the system will always take care of saying: "psst,
> > pretend to be a properly written piece of code".
> > 
> > If an application has nothing to do, it _must_ be blocked waiting for
> > something, such as an event, a timer, whatever it cares about, nothing
> > else.
> 
> Personally, I think it'd still be useful; without going to the
> (almost) co-operative multi-tasking of iOS.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Andrew
> 

I'd agree with Igor if the application is a newly written one.

But when porting from desktop to Maemo, adapting the code to be less power hungry can be a daunting task and not many developers have time for it (let's not forget that many port apps to Maemo for fun or bacause they need the port... it is, indeed, a hobby)

So I'd favour such an approach as well.

Aniello