Lack of structured information

Filip Onkelinx filip at linux4.be
Tue Feb 24 23:35:14 CET 2009


Hi all,

Since several months I'm trying to do some constructive development on my  
FreeRunner, but unfortunately I find myself spending way more time on  
finding trivial information compared to the time spent on actual coding.

I'm not looking for extensive manuals or generic linux info, just looking  
for minimalistic information which is specific to the FR.
- e.g. sysfs is supposed to be an interface between kernelspace and  
userspace, so I would expect it to be documented for at least the basics.
- lack of changelogs for downloads, including kernels, filesystem-images,  
srctarballs etc. When using a modern tracking system, changelogs do not  
present an additional effort, they are automatically generated from commit  
messages and are generated out-of-the-box and provide extremely valuable  
information to users / other developers.

To give just one example:
A simple question like 'is my FR running from battery, USB or wallcharger  
?'. With the recent kernel changes, most of these seem to have changed,  
but where are these documented ?
In order to find the answer, I had to check the kernel sourcecode, google,  
and do some trial & error tests . And even now I'm not sure I have it 100%  
correct.

what I found:
in /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0073/pcf50633-mbc/ there is a  
power_supply:ac , power_supply:adapter and power_supply:usb
usb is clear, but I'm still not sure I correctly understand the difference  
between 'adapter' and 'ac'.

I would expect OpenMoko to at least document the different  
files/Attributes which are platform dependant, and a changelog to indicate  
important changes having impact on userland applications / interfaces as  
well as known bugs (like the current usb crashes XP bug).

sorry for my rantings, but I would love to code & contribute, not to spent  
hours looking for some basic information...

Cheers,

Filip.





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