Maemo 5 pre-alpha SDK release notes

Project: Maemo 5 Fremantle Development Platform
Version: Maemo 5.0-prealpha
Date: 2008-12-08

The first Maemo 5 pre-alpha release announced by Nokia consists of a pre-alpha SDK targeted mainly at platform developers. It is still based on the Maemo 4.1.x UI and is not API complete. However, it represents a good opportunity to learn about the new components and see where the Fremantle release is heading.

This release includes:
- X86 development environment
- Armel development environment (only for cross compilation)
- Maemo SDK installer
- Scratchbox1 installer

The SDK contains a large number of headers, libraries and tools that are needed to develop software for the selected target system. It is installed inside the scratchbox1 cross compilation environment. It includes two targets for two different architectures and purposes:

  • x86: The x86 environment is used during the development stage of the software. Majority of development work is done in this environment inside scratchbox1.
  • armel: The ARMEL environment can be used for cross compiling software for the forthcoming device with Fremantle software.

Highlights

  • Maemo 5 prealpha SDK is an unstable release of maemo Fremantle software.
  • Introduces new components such as Clutter, Pulseaudio, libcanberra, OpenMAX and Tracker
  • It brings the diablo UI framework on top of fremantle toolkit. The new UI framework will be released at a later point of time.
  • Due to this mixture of old and new components, theming of the application windows and localization strings are slightly affected.
  • New scratchbox toolchains for Fremantle. Qemu version changed.
  • Applications written for diablo are not intended to work without recompilation.
  • 100% open source release. Nokia binaries will be included later.
  • Open source packages can be found here.
  • 92% of the sources compile.
  • For the differences between Maemo 4.1.1 and Maemo 5.0-prealpha, please refer to the content comparison or content changes table.

Hardware and software requirements

Recommended hardware setup can be found at scratchbox.org

Software requirements: Scratchbox1 Apophis R4 or later. Please read installation instructions for exact version requirements.

This release has been tested on Ubuntu Intrepid and Debian stable. It should also work on other scratchbox1 supported operating systems.

SDK Content

Hildon application framework subsystem

  • Clutter
  • Tracker
  • Application framework libraries
  • Matchbox library
  • Hildon desktop - old
  • Virtual keyboard
  • Control panel
  • Games wrapper

Multimedia subsystem

  • Pulseaudio sound server
  • libcanberra
  • Bellagio OpenMAX IL implementation library
  • Speex audio codec library
  • gUPnP
  • GStreamer

Connectivity subsystem

  • Bluez library - updated
  • WLAN library
  • GW OBEX library
  • wireless-tools library

Real-time communication subsystem

  • Glib telepathy connection manager library
  • Farsight2 library
  • libnice library

Full package management, apt support

  • Required tools included

Known limitations

  • Armel target is not recommended to run applications due to many qemu related problems mainly unsupported syscalls. To list a few known issues:

    • Threading support is not supported in qemu- arm-cvs-m. Scratchbox Apophis may have some problems with your host system's default settings. Known issues

  • Unnecessary warnings and debugging messages are printed out when the hildon application framework is started.

  • Theming of the application windows is slightly messed up due the mixture of new toolkit and old UI framework. The application window's close and minimize icons are interchanged. Context sensitive help icons "?" is missing.

Release feedback

General feedback on this release can be sent to fremantle-feedback@maemo.org

maemo5.0 related bugs should be reported to maemo bugzilla