[Community] The future of QtMoko

[Gilles Filippini]

Hi,

Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller a écrit , Le 23/09/2014 19:19:
> Hi,
> since I know that there are many QtMoko lovers out there who wait for
> new versions or new hardware that is supported, I have set up our own
> build system to compile QtMoko v58 and create GTA04-single-partition
> SD card images that might work with the newer DT based kernels we
> are working on.
> 
> Here is the first result (installer for a 3.17-DT based GTA04 kernel and the
> last official rootfs):
> 
> 	http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/qtmoko/
> 		makesd + unstable.tbz
> 
> It boots well an the touch is working. But of course many /sys nodes
> have changed so that there is neither WLAN, Bluetooth or WWAN.
> And no battery charging, sensors etc. But GPS appears to do something.
> 
> This raises some questions, especially as it appears that QtMoko isn’t
> developed any more. At least there have been no commits in the last
> 9 months.
> 
> The first practical question is how to easily run the compile/test/fix cycle.
> 
> It took several days on my setup (build within qemu-system-arm -M vexpress-a9)
> to build the qtmoko-gta04.deb, but finally it failed.
> 
> The next step, building a new rootfs and install and boot is much faster but
> still slow.
> 
> Q1: Is there a simple method to get the development cycle down to some minutes
> or even sub-minute?

It's been a long time since I last built QtMoko. It was cross-built on a
Debian amd64 box [1] in about 5 1/2 hours. It might be possible to go
down to a couple of hours on a decent box with parallel build enabled. See:
https://github.com/pini-gh/qtmoko/blob/master/debian/README.source

[1] AMD Athlon(tm) Neo X2 Dual Core Processor L325

Thanks,

_g.

> 
> Q2: The next question is how to adapt QtMoko to newer kernels since I assume
> that there are some dependencies - at least in the /sys file names.
> 
> Q3: Another question comes from the idea that QtMoko should not only run on
> the GTA02/04 devices but others as well. At least Letux 3704 and Letux7004,
> but OpenPandora, Pyra and Neo900 are also nice candidates. Interested?
> 
> Q4: This raises a follow-up question: does QtMoko (and the apps) adapt automatically
> to different screen sizes (or orientations like Neo900)?
> 
> Q5: Apropos GTA04: we could make QtMoko the standard install of the GTA04A5
> production image - retiring the primitive LXDE… Interested?
> 
> Q6: The next question goes @Radek (I hope he still reads here): do you plan to
> continue this work, i.e. accept patches? Or should we start and maintain a fork?
> 
> Q7: Finally, who is interested in developing and contributing towards making QtMoko
> the most simple but greatest Telephony-GUI and helps to push the packages to
> the mainline Debian?
> 
> Q8: should we base future development on donations like the kernel and Replicant?
> If we find enough donations we could even pay someone for working continuously
> on it.
> 
> A9: Other thoughs?
> 
> BR,
> Nikolaus
> 
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