Legacy apps on OZ

[clivel]

Hi,
Where could I find out what is required to run a commercial app on OZ?
I am trying to run SafeDee on OZ, and although opie-compat, has been installed, I am still having problems with the Qt libraries.
i.e
"error while loading shared libraries: libqpe.so.1"

Alternatively, where could I find documentation on recompiling for the OZ environment, I have looked at www.openzaurus.org, but couldn't find anything.

Any help, advice, or links to other resources would be appreciated.

Regards,
Clive

[lardman]

Alternatively, where could I find documentation on recompiling for the OZ environment

http://openembedded.org/oe_wiki/

But if it's commercial, I don't know how you're going to get the source....

Not sure about your error message; most stuff can be made to run on OZ and I've never seen this before.


Si

[clivel]

Hi Si,
Thanks for the link to the wiki.

But if it's commercial, I don't know how you're going to get the source....

Thanks, I have the source. Looking at the openembedded and openzuarus web sites, it is not obvious as to how one recompiles a Qt based app for OZ.  However it seems a lot more complex than just installing a few new libraries to link with and then recompiling.

I would prefer to have the application run on OZ without a recompile. Is OZ moving away from supporting Qt based apps completely? Or is there some sort of support for running them.  I thought that was what  opie-compat did.

Thanks,
Clive

[lardman]

I would prefer to have the application run on OZ without a recompile. Is OZ moving away from supporting Qt based apps completely? Or is there some sort of support for running them. I thought that was what opie-compat did.

Yes the compat libs should do that, but running natively is better of course.

What I'd do is to download OE (read the getting started bit of the wiki) and the Packages directory, then copy one of the existing Opie based packages (from the Packages directory) and edit for your source; you should then be able to create a working ipk from the source (I assume the source won't be released) which you can then release.

It seems like a lot of work, bit it's very easy if you follow the instructions; and stunningly painless to compile and create an ipk (all with a single command!).


Si

[zenyatta]

What lartdman means is http://www.openembedded.org/oe_wiki/index.php/RDayGuide

The process is really not as hard as it seems. Once you have OE set up, you

1. find an application that is as close to what you want to compile as possible and is already included in OE
2. find the application's .oe file and copy it with your new application's name
3. edit the new .oe file to reflect the differences between the old app and the new one
4. run "oebuild my_app.oe" - you should end up with an OZ ipk

.oe files are quite easy to understand (order of magnitude simpler than Makefiles) and there are tons of example files to learn from, as well as the OE wiki.

I agree the fact that stuff needs to be re-compiled is somewhat of a negative but OpenZaurus is simply evolving (new version of glibc, new version of gcc, the soft-float emulation library) and there is only so much one can do to maintain backwards compatibility.

z.

[clivel]

Hi Zenyatta and Lardman,
Thanks for the help and advice, it looks like I will have to go the way that you suggest.
I was not keen to go that route, as I already have a fairly comprehensive "scons" file this will build the Zaurus version, a Pocket PC version, and a desktop version. Including creating the different help files, packaging all the graphics etc.
I was hoping that I could install the correct OE libraries, headers and updated compiler, and just modify the "scons" file to point to these when building for OZ.

SCons, is a build tool for replacing make, it is written in Python and I can highly recommend it. I doubt that I will ever need to use make again.
Regards,
Clive

[zenyatta]

Maybe you'll like OE even better than scons  Besides, it's also Python based so maybe you'll feel right at home.