Re: Devices for embedded GNUstep development

[David Chisnall]

On 26 May 2008, at 09:35, hns@computer.org wrote:

> Since desktop systems are decreasing in popularity, notebooks are at
> their top attractivity and UMPCs/Handhelds at the horizon, I think we
> have to put a little more public emphasis on smaller embedded devices.

I really can't agree with this strongly enough.  Laptops outsold  
desktops for the first time last year, but mobile phones outsold PCs  
(laptops and desktops) about three to one worldwide.  A lot of  
developing countries are buying relatively smartphones as computers.

My current phone is two years or so old and was cheap when I got it,  
but it has more RAM and almost 10x as much CPU power as the original  
NeXTStation.  It has a tiny screen, but this is not the case in newer  
models.  Samsung are doing some very interesting work with Xen which  
will allow you to migrate a VM from your phone to your TV in a few  
years, which gets rid of this problem in situations where you have  
space for a big screen.

> I think the main problem for the GNUstep developers is to have a
> common handheld device platform to develop for. I know some of you
> have a N770 or N800, some others have a Sharp Zuarus. But I don't know
> of anyone to own a Neo 1973 (besides me).

I would say the biggest problem is the difficulty of getting GNUstep  
to work on these devices.  I own a Nokia 770, and have never done any  
development work on it because I was so frustrated with the cross- 
build environment that I gave up on it shortly after finally  
persuading it to install.  I'm quite happy to have a toolchain  
installed on the device to

> To change that, I want to offer something to the community. My company
> still has some brand new Acer n30 devices in stock and does a stock
> clearing sale at 99 EUR each. And I have the Letux Linux distribution
> (based on Angstrom / GPE) which converts the n30 into a nice Linux
> PDA. It fits onto a >= 256 MB SD card.

It looks interesting, but the screen is very low res.  The two Linux- 
based[1] portable devices I own are a Nokia 770 and an iRex iLiad.   
Both are ARM-based and both use the same Scratchbox environment for  
development.  GNUstep .debs for ARM and either a QEMU image containing  
GNUstep and the ARM cross-compiler toolchain[2] or a native build  
environment for the device that I can access via SSH (I tend to do  
most of my development via SSH anyway, so having the remote end being  
a palmtop really makes no difference to me).

> So, I suggest that everyone who wants to have such a developer
> platform, gets one, I provide the files for programming Letux on an SD
> card and we can organize ourselves towards developing embedded
> GNUstep.

While I'm not hugely interested in the hardware, I would be very  
interested in working with anyone interested in mobile GNUstep and  
especially with mobile Étoilé - I think CoreObject and EtoileUI will  
make a lot of sense in a mobile environment.

In particular, I would be interested in defining a set of defaults and  
behaviours for small-screen devices where things like overlapping  
windows don't make so much sense and floating palettes want to be  
hidden most of the time.

> Here is the link into the shop:
> http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=Acer%20n30


David

[1] The low-memory behaviour with Linux is spectacularly broken, so  
I'd be much more interested in something running OpenBSD - which also  
has a much smaller kernel footprint.

[2] Since these devices have ARM chips, and QEMU supports ARM, does  
anyone know why these devices don't just ship with an ARM QEMU image?   
Then you could run exactly the same binary in the emulator and on the  
machine.