developing C/C++ applications for OpenMoko -- where do we stand?

Joshua Layne joshua at willowisp.net
Mon Nov 12 18:59:24 CET 2007



On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:10:18 -0800, "Ron K. Jeffries" <rjeffries at gmail.com>
wrote:
> *** I HOPE I AM W-R-O-N-G!!! ***
> But this issue needs some discussion.
> 
> 
> Emre Turkay says below, (in essence)
> 
> --developing scripts for OpenMono is relatively easy
>   GOOD!
> 
> -- writing C/++ OpenMoko apps is very difficult to almost impossible.
>   BIG PROBLEM...
> 
> As an interested onlooker I want OpenMoko to not
> only survive but thrive, I am concerned that this project may
> not be able to reach critical mass.
> 
> If what Turkay says about the OpenMoko development platform
> is approximately correct, this project may be doomed.
> How can we be this far down the road without enough
> documentation that a larger group of developers can successfully
> write C/C++ apps for OpenMoko?
> 
I believe the core of this perceived issue is the cross-dev environment, as
most developers are not developing on native armv5te platforms.

There are libraries for the openmoko 'widgets' that have been produced
(openedhand).  Otherwise, I woul dimagine it is very similar to developing
in any other gtk+ environment.

The development environment uses openembedded - a monotone repository using
bitbake for builds - allowing for building against multiple targets from
the same source.

This *does* require learning a new tool - you have to set up an
openembeeded environment and you need to learn to write bitbake recipes to
build and deploy your project (if you use autotools, this is easy) -- at
least if you want your software to be incorporated into the main tree.

I hope this is helpful - for what it's worth, I'm not a C or C++ developer,
and I have gotten openembedded to build third-party packages that I am
personally interested in. (these third party packages are in C/C++...)

Regards,
joshua





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