More Developers...

[omro]

I was reading another tread in which Mickeyl wrote:

All the nice hardware won't buy us anything if the Zaurus developer situation stays the same. We need many more developers to make inherently complicated tasks seem easy for the casual user.

OK, I'm not a dumb person, though some of my posts probably sound very dumb, I just haven't got the major background needed in Linux and Linux development and as I've said before, I really don't know the first place to start sometimes. I read some of these posts and I feel like I'm missing key information required to help me follow some of the instructions, almost like I'm hearing another language without enough of the vocabulary to understand. The odd word makes sense, but the overall meaning is lost.

Perhaps the best way to encourage more developers would be to set up some kind of "developer school", to teach people the essential basics required. As soon as someone gets the basics, or knows where to learn them, you might suddenly get more people who make the appropriate mental leap into developing. I bet there are tons of people out there who'd love to learn how to develop for the Zaurus.

Just an idea.

[albertr]

Hello? What are you talking about? What school? And who is supposed to spend his/her time to teach you the basics? And at what expense?

If you really have motivation to learn, get down to the damn code and READ IT. After that, try to WRITE your own. If you can't do that, please don';t waste other people time.
-albertr

[Pyrates]

Make a friendly suggestion, and get pissed on your feet for that... riiight, that's what the community needs, albertr. Thanks for discouraging someone who's interested in development for the community.

But he's somewhat right. If people keep reacting THAT way to newbies who don't know how to start, there's just no way something's gonna change. And from my own experience I know that what YOU suggested is highly frustrating, takes a lot of time, and when you get stuck at some point and nobody's helping... Probably a "school" isn't the right idea, but newbies need to be taken by the hand, same as everywhere else.

Cheers
Philipp

[ScottYelich]

I'm a newbie developer.... but my code has been sitting ready to release for a while now.

I need to find out how to package it up... I can't really find any info on it.
I'm going to end up writing a shell script to install it and that seems kind of lame, but it *will* work.

:-<

Scott

[nilch]

We all need to frequent the "Eveything Development" thread more often, post more question and ask for help.

As a developer (novice) even I face the same frustration, but I have seen that asking question, dumb questions and some more in the development thread always elicits some response and some help over time. In the python forum I was once the stupid asking away questions like how to start a python program etc - but people (like Mickyl and others) always helped me out and step by step I have come some way (not a long way yet).

So that is a FIRST step to learning - go to the Development forum and post questions. And inspite of Albertr's rather harsh put down, he himself and others have frequently answered questions and helped without the question of "And at what expense" .

That thread by itself is a little "Developer school".  

[Meanie]

I'm a newbie developer.... but my code has been sitting ready to release for a while now.

I need to find out how to package it up... I can't really find any info on it.
I'm going to end up writing a shell script to install it and that seems kind of lame, but it *will* work.

:-<

Scott
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the ipk packages are just tar.gz files just gunzip and untar one and have a look at its structure. you will find a data.tar.gz inside which is just a tarball of the files in the directory structure they are to be extracted to and control.tar.gz contains a control file which is basically a manifest of the content of the package and there are also some optional post, pre scripts that can do some extra processing during install and uninstall. there is info about this out there. just google for it.




also, what albertr said is right, he just didn't say it in a very nice way. if you are a good developer, then you can develop code for any platform/environment, but you need to learn how to code first which is the difficult part that cannot be taught by a mere tutorial. tutorials are useful once you know the principles of programming and learned a programming language. simply saying you are a newbie doesn't cut it. programming is an art embedded in a science, not everyone is cut out for it and it takes time to master it. there are actually a lot of zaurus developers out there, they just dont speak english

[albertr]

If I sounded too harsh, I'm sorry for that. I didn't mean to offense anyone. Nor to discourage any potential developers. But I've seen so many posts asking about basic things... In my experience they never amount to nothing.
If somebody asking help about specific issues, I can understand that, and I would be glad to help myself if I could. But just asking about being schooled out... in general? Do you really believe it would work out? Do you really think he/she understand what he/she is asking for?

My point was - if the people have ability and motivation, they would do their homework and learn it themself. They ain't need no goddamn school for that. It's just like if you want to make a donation - JUST DO IT. Donate the money, hardware, beer, etc. But don;t post a thread about
making donations in general. It just doesn't work.
Ok, sorry for venting out, I better shut up for now.
-albertr

[omro]

And my point is that sometimes people just don't know where to start. The ZUG site is great, but some of the stuff still assumes a higher level of knowledge.

I was thinking only of something really simple like a section of a website, with a few building blocks, starter lessons, tutorials and how tos, the basics that more advanced people get frustrated answering the questions to over and over again.

Even a recommended reading list or recommended site to visit list would be a help.

Sometimes all it takes are a few pointers in the right direction and sometimes some people take a little longer to work things out than others.

[Greg2]

Even a recommended reading list or recommended site to visit list would be a help.

Here's a great resource to use. I first used it to compile my very first kernel... but there's much more then that available. Try the on line tutorials... you can start where ever you feel comfortable:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/training/

Greg

[CoreDump]

I'm a newbie developer.... but my code has been sitting ready to release for a while now.

I need to find out how to package it up... I can't really find any info on it.
I'm going to end up writing a shell script to install it and that seems kind of lame, but it *will* work.

:-<

Scott
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Maybe you should think about adding it to OE. Once it's in, rebuilding and packaging is a breeze

[Mickeyl]

Maybe you should think about adding it to OE. Once it's in, rebuilding and packaging is a breeze

Righto, and before everyone complains about that ruling out everything but OpenZaurus, let me reassure you that it would just take a couple of hours work from someone being interested enough to make OE build SharpROM + derived ROMs and pdaXrom compatible packages.

[ken]

There are many things one could do to contribute.  One could work on making documentation for instance.  Since I don't have programming skills, that's what I've been trying to do on elsix and on the wiki for zaurususergroup docs.

Once you rename the ipk to .gz or .tar or whatever it is, you'll find that everything inside is accessible to you.  From there you can study its contents and how things are structured.  Browse through your own Z and you'll see which directories that it needs for the various things.

Programming for the Z is pretty much the same as programming for linux afaik, except for the unique directories/locations that it wants things.

Good luck!

[speculatrix]

I think the biggest problem for me has been converting from native development to cross-compiled embedded GUI. I've downloaded all the qt/qtopia/qte stuff and built them and all the examples on linux/x86. I find that cross-compiling is tricky because one package uses the binary from another, which is not x86, and thus doesn't work. You have to build twice, once native, save binaries, then again arm, and switch in binaries as required.

That said, I've been able to build command-line tools no problem, even submitted some applications ported to zaurus to ELSIX. But I still haven't created my first qtopia app for Z, with all the variants of ROMS, libraries and so on is not easy. I installed Guylhem's development kit and the example program doesn't build at all - not even compiles, let alone links and runs on Z! I'm not a batchelor with hours and hours to spend, but I'm not a total noob, but I want to write an app, not fiddle around with cross platform packages!

There are people here who are probably quite talented artists who could do some nice GUI work, with others being able and happy to do the backend stuff; the former could probably achieve a lot if it were simple to get them up and running.

Why could we not get a server set up with shell accounts for interested people, where the environment is ready made? When you have a complete working example which builds and runs, you can then compare it with a setup on your own machine? The examples would include "hello world" programs in a number of variants: command-line, ncurses, and a qtopia app.

Paul

[ScottYelich]

wow.. I'm getting more followups here than in the developer forum -- anyway, I didn't mean to get off topic so this will be my last off-topic post in this thread reagarding this topic... what I mean is -- I have a Qt program ready to do ... I can probably hack together some tar.gz of the code and/or even hack together some makefile that does an install and then make an ipk -- the part that I'm missing is probably trivial to old timer developers, but I seem to be not understanding it ... how do I set a path when compiling so that my program knows where the code will be once it's installed... and, how do I then test the code without installing it, etc.

ie: all my loads are defaulting to "." and/or file browser.. but how do I know if the user wants to put the code in /usr/local/blah or /usr/share/blah or /opt/blah -- etc.  I think I'll just write a perl script since I'm comfortable with perl and sooner or later I'll figure this out.

Now, on to USEFUL stuff.  I probably pestered Mickey a lot... about python (and pyqt) -- although I found python just too slow for my needs and I have since moved on to C++ (and Qt).  I spent about 6 months reading books and now I've started to code and although I'm sure my code is embarassingly newbie-ish, it actually DOES something.  You can see that I'm playing with scons, but I don't think I really need that if I already have qmake (although it is full python -- hell, I might as well use perl which I already KNOW and then just call qmake, etc).

If you are bored... if you want to help ... http://www.spy.org/tmp/bwb30.tar.gz

I spent a lot of time on C++... I also want to try to do things that are useful -- so I want to make a texas hold'm (and blackjack trainer) and some stuff for pdaXrom (ntp settings?) etc.
The big issue with me is just time.  I need to maximize my time.  If you saw how bwb started, it is my third c++ program and only my second Qt program (see http://www.spy.org/tmp/gync.cpp as my second c++/first Qt) ... so bwb grew from about 10 lines with trying to figure out how o use Qt to a project where I was mostly trying as many Qt widgets as I could cram into the program.  Along the way, I made a little hinge checker class that I'll use in my other Zaurus projects.

Now, you ask, why so much rambling?  Well, I write this code because it compiles on my desktop, runs on my desktop and also runs on my Zaurus.  I don't know if this runs under Qtopia -- but eventually I may try to make my programs work under each.  I know this works under pdaXrom, but that also probably limits its audience.  The Zaurus world is small, but things like OE seem to maximize this smaller community.  I, personally, have been lame and went with pdaXrom because I can run straight X stuff which increases my ability to get software.  I have looked at wxWidgets (c++) but Qt seems very professional and I don't mind GPL at this point.

Scott
ps: spec, pdaXrom has a livecd and also I think an SDK cd... boot, compile.  env is all there.

[the_oak]

Could a developer look at this book at amazon.com and let me know if it is a good resource for a brand spanking new programmer to be? The title is:
Embedded Linux: Hardware, Software, and Interfacing
by Craig Hollabaugh

Search for it on amazon and click on the "look inside this book" link. It shows how to make a developer/cross-compiler setup, has info on interfacing with serial, parallel, usb, and memory i/o, a hello world type example and some other practical examples. This looks good to me, but since I know very little about programming, I'm not sure this will get me up and running.

Any input from developers on whether this is a useful resource or not? Also, will programs cross-compiled for arm work with the SL-6000?