Develop On Z Course / Distro

[koen]

Then again, maybe it's more complex than that.
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It depends on what you're trying to do. If you just want to cross-compile for the Z, one could, with a reasonable amount of effort, create an Embedix/Qtopia intallation[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=88318\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

So you're saying every Z in the world runs qtopia and if we want to develop stuff it should be qtopia? I'm a bit offended with that generalization.

[BarryW]

Winbloze

I wish people would stop doing that.
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Oh come on!  It's fun poking fun at them, until they steal your idea and force your company out of buisness...  

[ken]

ok, I was going to stay out of this, but it seems the conversation here is getting a little crazy.

I realize this is a poll, to vote on which path is best to take, so here's my 2 cents:

Start somewhere (doesn't matter where).  If you need a starting point, the Sharp ROM would be fine.  It doesn't matter if it's the best, the worst or whatever.  It *is* however a starting point.  The advantages here is:

1) every Sharp started there.  All the new sharps start with the Sharp ROM.  For new models, they have little choice but to use it in the beginning until someone has had their new model for a while.

2) It's not a moving target.  It's a known quantity that something solid could be built.  While it's not the easiest to develop for (and I'm not a programmer, so I may not be qualified to say all this, my apologies), it is something that can be a common starting point across the board to all Z's.

Once that has been done to the majority's satisfaction, you can then seqway into other distros, which I'm sure various people have their own interest in it.

It would mean of course, that developers would have a solid foundation that could reach all the models (with some variations I'd suspect).  I've noticed some apps that are common to all models that work great.    Then there are those that only work in certain models.

At the very least, this would be getting something done, rather than bikeshedding on perfection ....

I'd suspect the next big thing would then be showing a developer how he could make his program work in other ROMs, whether it be oz/gpe/whatever.  Effort there would be invaluable.

That being said, and not being a programmer, my ability to contribute to the effort is limited.   I was asked at one point if I could get something working, as they couldn't figure out what was wrong.  Here is the answer I slapped together in hopes it could help someone else searching out there:

https://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Compiling_on_the_6000L

I followed what the links did, and was able to:

 1) compile and run the example program in the console
 2) compile and run the example program which ran in the qtopia environment

Again, it's not meant to make everyone happy, but rather just to provide a starting point where "something" could get going ...

Let's not concern ourselves with which is better or worse, but rather how about we just start with what's common to all Z's?

A thought - a wiki isn't a bad way to go here.  That way if anyone has a specific interest, they could always add a page to their interest of course.

[kopsis]

So you're saying every Z in the world runs qtopia and if we want to develop stuff it should be qtopia? I'm a bit offended with that generalization.
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How on earth did you reach that conclusion? I used Qtopia as an example simply because that's what I'm familiar with. The question at hand was about the difficulty of making a cross-platform universal installer. I commented as someone with knowledge of what it would take to do that for the "official" Sharp Qtopia SDK. I was intentionally not generalizing. My very first sentence was "It depends on what you're trying to do." I intentionally left the door open to the whole range of options -- but I'm not qualified to elaborate on many of them.

Use whatever works for you but don't get "offended" when someone else chooses differently.

[craigtyson]

So you're saying every Z in the world runs qtopia and if we want to develop stuff it should be qtopia? I'm a bit offended with that generalization.
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How on earth did you reach that conclusion? I used Qtopia as an example simply because that's what I'm familiar with. The question at hand was about the difficulty of making a cross-platform universal installer. I commented as someone with knowledge of what it would take to do that for the "official" Sharp Qtopia SDK. I was intentionally not generalizing. My very first sentence was "It depends on what you're trying to do." I intentionally left the door open to the whole range of options -- but I'm not qualified to elaborate on many of them.

Use whatever works for you but don't get "offended" when someone else chooses differently.
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Also this thread is to find out who would willing to put up some sort of bounty for a beginners course in Z development.  If you have installed one of the more advanced / build it yourself distro's on the Z then your probably already in advance of what this thread is about.

[Ragnorok]

Winbloze

I wish people would stop doing that.
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- Sorry, man.  Can't help it most daze.  Automagic is nice ... 'til it breaks.  Then I for one prefer the ability to bypass the broken automagic and fix it.  Easy with Linux and a little know-how.  Much more difficult to impossible for MickeySawft.  So ... (shrug) ... it just pops out.
- I'll try to reign in, just for you.  If'n I fail, don't take it personally (wink)...

[jfv]

I understood Ev1l's post as wishing that people would stop using the-OS-that-must-not-be-named (with apologies to J.K. Rowling) but maybe is my generous interpretation.

Felipe

[Ragnorok]

D'oh!

[Snappy]

Winbloze

I wish people would stop doing that.
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Most second that!

I've been wanting to code for Z for a month now ... "unfortunately", I use WindowsXP and for the good part of last month, I've been flashing and reflashing my Z with the various roms, because each one almost provide what I need, only to disappoint at the end with a quirk!   That, is also why I want to code for Z.

I've coded for PocketPCs, Palm and HandheldPCs embedded devices but so far all the development platform is on Windows. For Palm, there was Metrowerks that I could use until I switch to PilRC tools and cygwin. As for PPCs and HPCs, it was basically a free download of their IDE for embedded devices + a free download of their SDK for the target platform.

Metrowerks and the IDE tools from MS are basically polished developer products that require the developer to just download and install. The developer has to just concentrate on designing, writing and testing the app he is writing for the device he targets. Either tools feature an emulator that runs on Windows, with the exception of HPC2000 platform, although I mostly code for HPCPro and it works upwards anyway.

PilRC tools and cygwin required abit more effort on the developer to setup the tools, but no rocket science here. It may be a bit daunting for developers not used to command prompts, but since I had my share of unix, linux and dos, it was not too much to bear. Fortunately, I could test out the code using the POSE tools (Palm emulator) on windows although I was not able to (nor need to) debug the code on the fly. For the most part, output debug strings was sufficient.

The one theme common in many reviews I have seen so far for Zaurii products is that there are lesser apps available for users compared to that of Palm or PPCs. If its an indication at all, it implies that there are many more developers on these two other platforms. Here I mean app developers. I doubt these developers would be able to write a kernel for PalmOS or WindowsMobile OS or the likes, but they write good apps that end users love and *use* on a daily basis. If we want more app developers, we need to make it simple to setup the development environment and tools for writing an app for the Z. And having a tool (say cygwin?) on windows is a big bonus. The last I check, there appear to be more pure app developers for windows than there are for linux.

oh, and did I mention that the downloads for the tools for all the platforms I mentioned came below 80mb? Metrowerks came in even lesser ... around 40mb I believe. An environment requiring 7gb of space is daunting for even commercial developers, much less hobbists. I kinda refuse to install VisualStudio.Net when I find it requires 2+ gb of install space and stuck to an older development environment which provided adequate functionalities I needed.

I hope against odds that a Z development distro can be had on a CD or ISO download where developers can just order or download, install, and start coding. This vs download, install, troubleshoot, search, download, install, troubleshoot ...

[erikqwerty]

One for Cacko would probobly produce the biggest impact, so many use it.

A complete THEMING howto for Cacko would be simply awsome  All themes I see are for Sharp Rom

Erik, (Wanabe Cacko Dev)

[Cresho]

for the past couple of months, i been looking for tools to develop for the z.  I probably am looking in the wrong direction.

the sharprom has a directory which includes a dev and makedev file.  what is this really used for?

were can i find dev tools which will work for the sharprom c1000?  I tried a few and failed to manage to install due to probable fat partition.  do i need ext2?  damn me i should of grabed a c3100.  im triyng to get mame to function properly on the z.


hope someone has a solutuion.  my time is short so i rather develop than build dev tools or guess what works.

[polito]

Dunno if you figured out what the MAKEDEV script was for or not Cresho, but it's basically a script to create the device files in the /dev directory with the proper major and minor numbers.

Way back when, most of the device files you have already (or are magically created for you by your system when you plug something in or it gets detected by the kernel) didn't exist. And when a new linux kernel would come out or some new 3rd party device drivers came out for some hardware, you could compile it sure... but you wouldn't be able to get at your hardware until you created the proper device nodes in /dev

MAKEDEV knows about a bunch of devices already so you could tell it to create certain types and it'd just do it for you. But sometimes you have to go and use mknod itself which is what MAKEDEV actually calls to do it's dirty work anyway.  mknod creates the block or character special files in /dev with whatever name, type, major and minor number is needed.

You can do a

Code: [Select]

man MAKEDEV
man mknod to get a little more information on it

Hmm... on the other end of things... did this fall apart somewhere? Or did someone make something to help people develop?  It's unfortunate there are people that get all in a huff when their preferred distro's name is mangled or completely ignored but as CraigTyson said, the fact that people who have been using Z's for a very long time can't get the names right just goes to show how needed something like this is.

That attitude of taking offense at imagined insults is exactly what keeps people from wanting to bother with the other systems that are out there for the Z.  I mean really, who wants to deal with people that can't seem to understand that not everyone is an expert at all things Zaurus and that the only way they can TRY to become an expert is by asking all the stupid questions in the FIRST place.

Anyway, I would be willing to pay good $$$ to get help going towards making something workable for people to start out with and begin to learn how to do things. Perhaps we might even be able to work through example applications and interfacing with the various libraries and what not? I think that would be most helpful to get more developers that would be able to help contribute to all the various projects that are going on.

[Ragnorok]

- Typing this on Hiro so it may be short.  Depends on when the battery gives up the ghost.  (grin)
- Re-reading this thread/ it strikes me that it may be the very simplest to create a CD with a Linux distro and the dev tools/ essentially pre-installed and ready to go .  The neophyte Z coder simply installs the whole thing on a spare box (partition, whatever) fires it up, and starts coding.  With a Knoppix-like system it could be made to boot from the cd and run directly/ but taht would be more difficult, imho.
- The goal would not be to satisfy everyone.  The goal would be to have *a* ready-built system that a newbie developer coulld use easily.  It would be for the Sharp ROM for the previously mentioned reason ... EVERY Z comes with it out-of-the-box/ so it's a known quantity.
- Oops!  Batt's red...

[Meanie]

well, I customised the zgcc cramfs image for my own use because it didn't do what I wanted to. But now I can use it to compile C/C++ console apps, Qt apps with GUI and kernel modules all from a single image. I also made the installation simpler so I can just stick it onto my CF card and move it between different Zs. If anyone is interested have a look at http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html#gcc and download it from http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/stuff/zgcc2-95-2.zip

[craigtyson]

Any news on a RAD/IDE (Delphi/visualage alike) Id love to put some gui apps together or even just VGAify some of the older 5500 apps out there for the C series.