FreeSmartphone.Org packaging team

See DebianOnFreeRunner for user and general information. This page contains information for the pkg-fso packaging team.

Goal

We want to add the applications and tools developed by FreeSmartphone.Org (FSO) for devices like the Openmoko FreeRunner to Debian and ensure that Debian can be used as the system on these devices. After all, Debian is the universal operating system.

Communication

We share the mailing list with the upstream FreeSmartphone.Org developers: http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/smartphones-userland and as our IRC channel, we use #openmoko-cdevel on freenode.

Resources

We have a repository on pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org that contains our packages until they are included in Debian, both for armel and desktop architectures. You can access them using these apt lines:

deb http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main
deb-src http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main

To suppress apt authentication warnings you can upload the pkg-fso-keyring package after adding the repository:

apt-get install pkg-fso-keyring
apt-get update

Please be aware that some packages might depend on packages in Debian experimental. You thus need to activate it in your sources.list. By default no packages not explicitly needed will be pulled from experimental.

To upload packages to this repository with dput, you can use this configuration snippet:

[pkg-fso]
method = scp
fqdn = alioth.debian.org
#login = someone
incoming = /home/groups/pkg-fso/repository/incoming
post_upload_command = ssh alioth.debian.org /home/groups/pkg-fso/repository/bin/process_incoming

Packages

This is an overview of the packages maintained by pkg-fso:

• zhone: The demo UIBugs

• zhone-session: Init scripts to start zhone on system start. Do not install this on your desktop.Bugs

• fso-frameworkd: System daemon providing most phone features via dbus.Bugs

• gsm0710muxd: GSM multiplexer daemonBugs

• fso-utils: Various tools, including mdbus, mickeyterm, uboot-enveditBugs

Also see http://pkg-fso.nomeata.de/sid/allpackages for an overview of packages in our custom repository.

VCS

Some packages, especially those that are in a git repository upstream, are maintained in git repositories, using git-buildpackage:

• zhone: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/zhone.git Gitweb

• zhone-session: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/zhone-session.git Gitweb

• fso-frameworkd: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/frameworkd.git Gitweb

• gsm0710muxd: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/gsm0710muxd.git Gitweb

• fso-utils: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/fso-utils.git Gitweb

There is also a repository for various other files, including the installation script

• files: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-fso/files.git Gitweb

Bugs and TODO

These bugs are relevant for us and should be monitored regularly:

• Bugs in any of the fso-pkg packages

• #435662 apt-get/aptitude: too many xserver dependencies

• #449049 powermgmt-base: must not use /sbin/MAKEDEV

• #494612 python-edbus: FTBFS on debian unstable chroot on x86

• xserver-xorg-input-tslib all bugs in xserver-xorg-input-tslib package

• dropbear all bugs in dropbear package

Each bug in pkg-fso packages or any other package affecting Debian on the Openmoko FreeRunner should be marked with an usertag. You can browse all usertagged bugs by this link or grouped by tag.

Here the list of already used usertags:

• upstream-fso, as a workaround for #496692

• dfsg, against the Debian Free Software Guidelines

• infrastructure-*, affecting the resources used by pkg-fso

  • infrastructure-bts

• package-*, affecting one of the package "steps"

  • package-creation

  • package-dependencies

  • package-installation

  • package-removal

• config-*, affecting the configuration of a specific software

  • config-xglamo

  • config-frameworkd

  • config-zhone

• network-*, affecting network components

  • network-ssh

• input-*, affecting input methods

  • input-keyboard

  • input-touchscreen

• bluetooth, affecting bluetooth

  • bluetooth

These should be looked into:

• switch to busybox to reduce disk space usage (AFAIK the only package missing would be dropbear) discussion on the smartphone-standards mailing list, but it deviates a bit too much from a standard Debian system link

• modify U-Boot environment variables from a running system. This is partly working in the install.sh script, but needs more testing and debugging.
• directly install uImage.bin on the rootfs (it seems that uBoot does not support large sdcards. Feels like 1998 :-). (Rumors say it’s possible with newer uboots))
• Automatically detect a USB client device at the USB port, and switch to host mode.

• zhone-session should start a proper session (su -l maybe) discussion on the smartphone-userland mailing list not-yet-released implementation

• write manpages to conform to Debian policy
• Packaging of nice apps:

  • http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Gestures

  • http://projects.openmoko.org/projects/pythm/

  • http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Swirlberry___kerberized_email_on_the_Openmoko_Freerunner.html

  • https://launchpad.net/sephora/

  • http://fso-control.projects.openmoko.org/

  • http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/rantalai/freerunner/numptyphysics/

  • http://osip.projects.openmoko.org/ (but there is already an older oSIP project)

  • http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/TwitterMoko (if there is some Debian + Twitter user willing to answer user request – I don’t use twitter)

  • http://linball.sourceforge.net/

  • http://mokomaze.projects.openmoko.org/ - [javascript:void(0);/*1236860420075*/ done]

DebianOnFreeRunnerTodo is a separate page that lists some less concrete things that one might want to work on.

• CategoryTeams