Handhelds, Linux and Heros

Since OpenSync switched to CMake build system I had to get along with CMake in the Maemo SDK. I have to admit the fun was limited. In fact CMake has some advantages over autotools - most notably: It is much faster. One major drawback is that it is more complicated to use pkg-config with it.

I have never worked with CMake before, but OpenSync had some quite good examples how to check and support additional libraries. So I hacked cmake support for some basic Maemo components (libhildon, libosso) and Maemo-like Debian packages.

My cmake files can be found here:

http://www.kernelconcepts.de/~fuchs/maemo/

CMake itself is in the official extras-devel repository at maemo.org. Just add this line to your sources.list:
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel chinook free

The package is available for all other SDKs from the same location.

The DpkgDeb.cmake file is based on the updated DpkgDeb.cmake by Mehdi Rabah. The other ones are based on random files found in OpenSync SVN.

I have made an installable package for Maemo Sync, but do not expect too much. Its a basic port of the current Multisync-gui to Maemo. It is only tested to so far that the GUI starts up and registeres correctly. The fact that I had to use cmake for building Maemo software caused some headaches here… the quality of the source distribution package is still quite bad.

I also did not decide if I want it to become a project forked from Multisync-gui or to maintained with Multisync-gui adding optional support for Maemo environment. The always changing OpenSync API would be a reason to stay with Multisync-gui, but the fact that I have different opinions about UI design, Glade is involved and cmake are reasons for making it a separate project.

Binary package and sources are located here. You also need the OpenSync packages from Graham’s daily repository.

Another minor improvement of the GPE application packages in this repository is that latest Starling supports OGG playback. You only need to have an OGG plugin for GStreamer installed. The mogg package provides this for example.

Any feedback is welcome - if you manage to sync data with either the command line tool msynctool or using Maemo Sync please drop me a line. I would like to collect information which sync peers work with latest OpenSync and how to set up these.

Enjoy!

LinuxTag 2008 will be great for people interested in mobile and embedded Linux. I do not know about all the projects that will have a booth there, but GPE, GPE Phone Edition, QuantumSTEP and OpenEmbedded will be there at least. The application for a booth for these projects was accepted some days ago.

LinuxTag is one of the largest and most interesting Open Source events in Europe. It is known to be a great forum for meeting all sorts of people interested in Open Source - LinuxTag attracts developers, business people and users in equal measure. It will take place in Berlin from May 28th till May 31st

A big thanks to the LinuxTag people and the booth sponsors for the opportunity to show what we are doing.

For OpenEmbedded event planning we have a wiki page that can be found here.