OFT Status Update 2008.11.1

Michael 'Mickey' Lauer mickey at openmoko.org
Tue Nov 11 17:25:29 CET 2008


Hi guys! This is the fifth Openmoko Framework Team Status update, featuring 
our fourth milestone release and more.

Read this mail as Wiki page @ 
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenmokoFramework/Status_Update_5

For the general motivation, the goals, and the way we are doing our work, 
please see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenmokoFramework

== People & Organization ==

* Charlie <charlie at openmoko.org> has left the Framework team to embrace new 
challenges in lower software levels. He'll be around for maintenance work on 
his code though. Thanks for all your work and good luck with the bare 
metal :)

* John <john_lee at openmoko.org> has shifted focus to lead the new long-awaited 
Openmoko software optimization team. We will surely interface with his team. 
Good speed, John!

* As the Openmoko weekly engineering news already told, the freesmartphone.org 
team has been more "formally" established as an independent team funded by 
Openmoko Inc. to support defragementing the mobile system services world.

* More details with regards to the new organization and forthcoming roadmap 
will come soon

== DBus APIs ==

All the public DBus API is documented on the official 
[http://docs.freesmartphone.org freesmartphone.org API reference] site.

* The GSM API (org.freesmartphone.GSM.*) has proven very solid and will be 
tagged 0.9 before the next milestone.

* The Device API (org.freesmartphone.Device.*) has received some additions for 
power management and starts stabilizing.

* The Usage API (http://docs.freesmartphone.org/org.freesmartphone.Usage.html) 
which was merely a reference counting wrapper over the Device API has gained 
two companions:
   * The Resource API 
(http://docs.freesmartphone.org/org.freesmartphone.Resource.html) turns this 
into a full-blown resource management system with choosable policies etc.
   * The 
[http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=specs.git;a=blob_plain;f=html/org.freesmartphone.Usage.html;hb=HEAD#Suspend 
Suspend] call is resource-aware and gives all resources a chance to prepare 
for a suspend and to recover after a suspend.

* org.freesmartphone.Objects.ListObjectsByInterface is using 
DBus-introspection now.

* The Events subsystem has gained an experimental 
[http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=specs.git;a=blob_plain;f=html/org.freesmartphone.Events.html;hb=HEAD 
DBus interface] to add and remove rules and to test triggers.

== Implementations ==

'''Freesmartphone.org Framework Image -- 'Homework' (Milestone IV)'''

This is the fourth milestone release of the framework and the framework 
testing application 'Zhone'. With the forthcoming release of other FSO API 
consumers, Zhone is going to be faded out. Further framework milestone 
releases will ship in two forms:
1. fso-console-image: An FSO-compliant image featuring no user interface 
manager.
2. fso-illume-image: An FSO-compliant image featuring the X-Window system with 
the Enlightenment-based Illume window manager.

===Thanks===

Thanks to all our contributors, especially the testers and the people who 
build stuff on top of the freesmartphone.org APIs -- notably the 
[http://shr.bearstech.com/trac/wiki SHR team] who found literally thousands 
of bugs in the framework that we had to fix for this milestone release. 
Thanks, guys!

===Purpose===

A lightweight image that turns an Openmoko phone into a featurephone and that 
serves as the basis for further application development using the 
freesmartphone.org dbus APIs.

=== What's new since Milestone III ===

'''Note: These are only the highlights. See the [http://git.freesmartphone.org 
gitweb] commit logs for the gory details...'''

* ogsmd
* Lots of bug and stability fixes based on feedback (and debug logs) from 
people
** SMS API now includes an a{sv} parameter with optional SMS properties
** Phonebook API now supports multiple phonebooks (dialed, missed, answered)
** PDU mode has been improved to handle the 7-bit reference GSM charset, UCS-2 
and binary messages
** Workaround for http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1024 Change the 
behaviour with 'ti_calypso_deep_sleep' option in [ogsmd] section (valid 
options are always, never and adaptive)
** Implemented the org.freesmartphone.GSM.SMS.interface to send and receive 
SMS without going through the SIM and 
org.freesmartphone.GSM.Device.SetSimBuffersSms() to switch between SIM 
buffered mode and not.

* opgsd
** Improved GTA01 support even with suspend/resume (if gllin v1.1 is 
installed)
** Various warmstart fixes
** Enabled SBAS by default on ubx chips

* odeviced
** Use ioctl based screen blanking which saves a lot of power

* oeventsd
** The rules system has been improved
** New triggers, filters

* misc
** Much cleaner and improved resource interface with working power management  
(enable, disable, suspend, resume)
** A persistence module that stores persistent data for subsystems

* zhone
** New default theme contributed by o_toby
** Show timestamps in incoming SMS
** Support for Chinese and other characters (Unicode support)
** Display more GPS information if available (ephemeris, almanac available, 
signal status)

* illume
** GSM module doesn't segfault any more

===Download / Installation===

1. Grab a uImage and a .jffs2 for your device from 
http://downloads.openmoko.org/framework/milestone4/.
2. Flash it to your [[Flashing the Neo 1973|Neo 1973 (om-gta01)]] or 
[[Flashing the Neo Freerunner|Neo FreeRunner (om-gta02)]] with [[Dfu-util| 
dfu-util]].
3. Boot and wait until the Zhone main window appears.
4. ''If the [[Zhone]] main window does not appear on first boot or stays 
with "connecting to dbus..." longer than 1 minute, then please reboot. The 
base system still has some problems with dbus starting for the first time''
5. Read the [[FSO UI Tutorial]] and have fun. Note though that this has not 
been updated yet for milestone 4 (which looks a bit differently and has more 
features).

===What you can expect from this release===

* Telephony
* Phonebook
* SMS
* Messagebook
* GPS
* frameworkd implementing the following dbus APIs:
** org.freesmartphone.GSM.*
** org.freesmartphone.Device.*
** org.freesmartphone.Usage
** org.freesmartphone.Resource
** org.freesmartphone.Events
** org.freedesktop.Gypsy

===What we expect from you===

* Feedback and comments for the dbus APIs. This is your chance to take an 
active role into shaping the application programming interface for all your 
forthcoming cool applications.

* Focus on using the services. Zhone is just our testing-UI and bears little 
functionality. It's the services that matter.

* The best way to interact with the framework is by exploring the dbus APIs. 
For that you can use these two tools, which are already installed:
** [[OpenmokoFramework/mdbus|mdbus]] -- a dbus introspection and interaction 
utility,
** [[OpenmokoFramework/cli|cli-framework]] -- a python dbus command line 
interface.

* Before reporting bugs against the framework, please try with cli-framework 
to see whether it's really a problem of the framework or rather the UI (which 
gets much less attention from us).

* If you want to interact with the GSM modem, while the frameworkd is running, 
you can use [[OpenmokoFramework/mickeyterm|mickeyterm]] -- a MUXer-aware 
minimal terminal emulator.

===Best way to hand us debug logs===
# log in via ssh
# killall python
# edit /etc/frameworkd.conf and add to the frameworkd section:
## log_level = DEBUG
## log_to = file
## log_destination = /somewhere/where/you/have/space (preferably SD or NFS, 
etc.)
# Read our 
[http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=framework.git;a=blob;f=conf/example/frameworkd.conf 
documented frameworkd.conf] configuration file to learn about the other 
options.
# relaunch frameworkd (/etc/init.d/frameworkd stop; /etc/init.d/frameworkd 
start)
# log in via ssh (yes, again)
# export DISPLAY=:0.0
# run your favourite client (zhone, cli-framework, ...)

Attach the logs to the tickets, please.

==What's next==

* PIM
* Networking
* Unit Tests
* High Level Documentation
* More Device Support (GTA03, HTC, EZX)

==The Team==

Mickey, Jan, Daniel, Guillaume, John, Stefan.

-- 
:M:



More information about the devel mailing list