gpsd vs. gypsy (was Re: GPS application)

Shawn Rutledge shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com
Tue Jul 29 20:18:23 CEST 2008


On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 7:47 AM, Tilman Baumann <tilman at baumann.name> wrote:
> And if gpsd is so great, ever wondered why tangoGPS has a button to
> restart and reconnect gpsd?

Personally I have not noticed gpsd crashing.  I have noticed that the
gllin package's double-logging feature fills up the flash after a day
or so, and then it crashes.  There is both /home/root/gps.gz and
/home/root/gllin/logs/.  But this should be easy to fix.

I have tested gpsd on my Linux PC with normal serial-interfaced GPS
devices for days at a time (and xgps connected to it) with no problem.

> And why i (gta01 user) have to launch gllin
> via tangoGPS?

I have it starting up automatically on my phone.  But it would save
some power not to run it when you don't need it.

> And here a sack full of my 2 cents:
> gypsy - yes
> gpsd - no (at least not as it is, maybe as compat interface)

I don't understand why there is not more cooperation between these
two.  gpsd is very old, well-established and with a lot of experience
with various GPS devices, which I think gypsy probably cannot hope to
achieve very soon, without combining forces.  The home page explains
that nearly every device has its quirks and bugs, which all have to be
worked around.  How could all that experience be of no value?  Granted
on these phones we only have to worry about 2 devices, not dozens, but
I think the bug-workarounds are the reason why gpsd has been used a
lot.

http://folks.o-hand.com/iain/gypsy/why-not-gpsd.html

I still think gpsd could have a dbus interface added, and it would
solve the problems that are mentioned.  And I think that the socket
interface is a positive, and is a good thing to retain for
backwards-compatibility, rather than requiring a rewrite of existing
applications to use dbus rather than libgps.  It's analogous to the X
window system: most use cases don't require network transparency, but
it sure is nice to have it available in case you ever need it.  There
are faster alternative communication mechanisms (such as shared
memory) that can be used when possible.




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