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README

Contents

  1. Getting Started
  2. Development Targets
  3. Source Samples
  4. ESbox Eclipse Plugin
  5. Environment Configuration
    1. Starting Open Virtual Machine Tools
    2. Installing Official VMware Tools
    3. Changing Display Resolution

Getting Started

This is the Maemo SDK VMWare Appliance. To start using Maemo just click on the "Maemo SDK Environment" icon in the top left of the workspace.

Screenshot 1

It will open a Xephyr window and a terminal running scratchbox...

Screenshot 2

...where you can start the Maemo environment with

$ af-sb-init.sh start

The graphical environment will be shown in the Xephyr window.

Screenshot 3

Development Targets

The targets for the Maemo 4.0 platform are CHINOOK_X86 (i386) and CHINOOK_ARMEL (arm). You can use the i386 target during most of the development phase, and then change to ARMEL when you decide to deploy or test your software in the device

The default target is CHINOOK_X86, but you can change environments calling the sb-menu utility, going in the Select option, and choosing the environment.

If you switch between X86 and ARM targets, remember to stop and restart the environment with af-sb-init.sh stop and af-sb-init.sh start, respectively.

WARNING: For some reason af-sb-init.sh stop doesn't work on the ARMEL target, and before changing targets you need to call sb-menu select the Killall option, and send a 9 signal to the processes running.

Samples Source Code

You will find some code in the sample_source folder on the scratchbox home. There are samples in C, C++, Python and Vala languages, plus examples using Maemomm and Enligthenment Foundation Libraries. You can go inside the respective folders, compile them with make. If other procedure is needed it will be described in the README on the relevant directory.

Notice that if you run your code just with ./compiledsample the result will be so ugly that it will pierce your eyes.

./hello

So, remember to execute this with the run-standalone.sh

run-standalone.sh ./compiledsample

run-standalone.sh ./hello

ESbox Eclipse Plugin

The ESbox plugin for Eclipse allows you to develop Maemo application using the popular IDE. Detailed instructions on how to use it can be found in the Maemo4Mobile page. And an educational screencast can be watched on Google Video, or download a higher resolution version in Ogg/Theora format.

Environment Configuration

Starting Open Virtual Machine Tools

If you are using VMware Player to run the Maemo SDK, having VMware Tools in the image will make your life a lot easier. You will be able to drag'n'drop files and copy and paste text between the host and guest operational systems.

We have installed the Open Virtual Machine Tools in this image. It is very recent and we have had some problems making it start in an "automagic" fashion, and sometimes it fails to start on boot. But fear not, it's very easy to have your copy'n'paste working, click on this icon to start the Open VM services:

Start Open Virtual Machine Tools

This is equivalent to open a terminal and issue this command:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-user start

Installing The Official VMware Tools

ATTENTION: The steps described bellow must be done inside the VM image.

You will need a file that is deeply inside VMware Workstation, the comercial version of VMWare. So this process will require some steps:

First, download VMware Workstation for Linux (we suceeded with the version 6.0.1); then you need to find the linux.iso file:

$ tar ztvf VMware-workstation-6.0.1-55017.i386.tar.gz | grep "linux.iso"
-r--r--r-- root/root 110034944 2007-08-21 22:58 vmware-distrib/lib/isoimages/linux.iso

Extract it using the path indicated by tar:

$ tar zxvf VMware-workstation-6.0.1-55017.i386.tar.gz \
vmware-distrib/lib/isoimages/linux.iso
$ mv vmware-distrib/lib/isoimages/linux.iso .
$ rm vmware-distrib/ -rf

The file you need is inside this ISO, so mount it.

$ mkdir /tmp/iso
$ sudo mount -o loop ./linux.iso /tmp/iso
$ cp /tmp/iso/VMwareTools-6.0.1-55017.tar.gz .
$ sudo umount /tmp/iso

Now, untar it, enter in its folder and install:

$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl

You will be asked a lot of questions, fortunately you can accept all the defaults, but read carefully anyway, for in the end there are some pos-installation instructions.

Testing

You can try the following VMware Tools features:

Changing Display Resolution

If you want to change the display to a higher resolution, open a terminal and run:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg