Work on gsmd as a GSoC project

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Hi Sudharshan S,

> I would love to work on libgsmd this summer as part of the GSoC. I am
> aware of the work done by Mickeyl and emdete for freesmartphone.org, so
> would like to have some comments from the list. (No one likes duplicated
>  effort ;D).

Righto.

> As far as libgsmd is concerned, I would love to help around in two areas.
> 1.) Complete the API according to the specifications and do some cleanup.
> 2.) Implement gsm0710 specs (which freesmartphone.org does with dbus?).
> I happened to come across some patches[1] in the bug tracker which
> brings the mux in a lower level. Maybe it would be useful if we pull
> that together and make it work?.

The gsm situation is complicated. We soon have three things to chose from:

1.) original gsmd, which the community thinks has lots of problems.
2.) gsmd2 (from ixonos people), a complete reimplementation using a 
proprietary dbus interface (but soon freesmartphone.org)
3.) pygsmd, a minimal implementation in python using a proprietary dbus 
interface (but soon freesmartphone.org).

I personally(!) think gsmd(1) is a dead-end, because of its design. It is 
already more complicated than necessary. Now that we have the 
freesmartphone.org GSM 0710 MUXer, we could simplify the design a lot.

2) may look good, but I did not have a chance to review the implementation 
yet.

3) is working pretty solid, but in Python, which may be a problem for some 
platforms.

My plan a couple of months ago was to create a phone server with a backend and 
frontend so that we could play with different backend implementations -- 
eventually settling on the most stable one. (See 
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Roadmap/Telephony)

Now that the freesmartphone.org OTAPI starts to stabilize, work on that phone 
server could be started. I don't know whether this could be a student project 
though.

What do the others think?

> P.S: Even if OM doesnt make it to the GSoC, I can still help. :D

Thanks -- welcome on board! :)