When we started to develop symbian applications at INdT we, as open source developers, decided to find a way to keep using linux as our development environment.
On the beginning we didn’t have yet an official way to compile our applications on linux, so we used (and still use) Lizardo’s patchs that enables gnupoc to compile Qt-symbian applications on Linux.

First tip:

Personally I think finding errors on gnupoc output is an exhaustive job. So, the first tip for those who’re using Lizardo’s approach is to use a small piece of code in your .bashrc

function makes60
{
  make debug-gcce 2>&1 | while read line
  do
    echo -e $(echo $line |
      sed 's@\\@\\\\@g' |
      sed "s/.*error.*/\\\e[0;31m(&)\\\e[0;31m/I" |
      sed "s/warning/\\\E[33m(&)\\\E[0;37m/gI" |
      sed "s/No such file/\\\E[33m(&)\\\E[0;37m/gI"
      )
  tput sgr0;
done;
}

By calling makes60, every error/warning message will be highlighted in read/yellow.
It's a simple tweak, but it is very useful.

So, we can compile our application, easily read the compiler messages... Now what?

Analyzing the process:

Let me list our development phases:

• Coding: OK with vim
• Compiling: OK with gcce and some tweaks
• Debugging: (As we work almost only with default Qt API, we build for linux first and debug there). So, it's almost OK.
• Packaging .sis: OK with make sis
• Send to device, install and test: It's a slow process yet.

Testing on the device is a very difficult/slow task on linux. We don't have a debugger. We don't even have any output message (Ok, we have: with stdioserver writing on an txt file. Too hard!).

How does it works for Windows developers? Carbide++ and TRK!

Of course we don't want to install Carbide++ on linux. So, can we use TRK with linux? Yes, we can! First of all you need to get the TRK application in Carbide++ package or in newly released Nokia SDK.

Installing TRK:

1. Send and execute TRK.sis on the device.
2. Open TRK application / Options / Settings,  and select Connection = USB instead of bluetooth.
3. Go to TRK mainscreen / Options / Connect.

If your USB cable is plugged you will receive a "Status: Connected" message on your phone.

Now you need to create a serial connection between the device and your linux machine. If you're using a 2.6.33 kernel you don't need to do that. Otherwise you need to create it manually.

Before you do that you need some information about the device. It can be retrieved with:

[danilo@docbrown ~]$ lsusb  | grep Nokia
Bus 001 Device 011: ID 0421:0154 Nokia Mobile Phones

So, my vendor ID is 0421, and my product ID is 0154.  Remember to use your own numbers =)
And then you can load the usbserial mobule with the command:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x0421 product=0x0154

If everything went OK you should see a message like this:

[danilo@docbrown ~]$ dmesg | grep ttyUSB
[34063.949446] usb 1-4.3.1.4: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Your serial port was created on /dev/ttyYSB0.

Ok, perfect! But how to communicate with TRK?

Trolls are working on that, but for now we’re using the runonphone tool. It’s the same tool used by QtCreator on Windows and you can get it by cloning Qt Repository and compiling the /tools/runonphone folder.

On device testing

After compiled, runonphone can be used by passing the serial port, the sis package and the executable file to it.
runonphone -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -s test_package.sis test_package.exe

As you probably noticed all your qWarning() messages are being redirected to runonphone output. Which is very nice!

On device debugging

We don’t have an interative gdb tool as we have on windows, but Qt guys are close and I’m sure we will have good news in a few days.

Concluding

I’m sure that Symbian development on Linux is near, and it will be massively adopted when those tools became part of QtCreator for linux. For those who can’t wait, or think that VIM is the best IDE ever, I hope those tips can help you. =)

And for those who’re working with Qt for symbian, remember to join the #qt-symbian on Freenode.

When I was trying to pairing my keyboard, I could see that Su-8W is a pre-configurated keyboard, and with a little of patience, I dicovered the file who manages this: /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/su-8w.

With 5 minutes by reading this file you can be familiarized with file syntax. And, with 10 minutes, you can note that THERE IS NOT A LAYOUT DEFINITION FOR PORTUGUESE/SPANISH. So, now I know why the Portuguese layout doesn’t work =).

But, Ok. Lets try to fix it.

If I select portuguese layout, and there is no portuguese layout, I assume that it’ll use us-intl, right? But, in the begining of the intl definition exists a anoying comment: “I can’t belive! It’s not intl”. Hummm…

Lets ignore this, and go on… What do I need? Dead_keys in `,~,",',^, and ç when I press “ALTgr + c”.

I’ll not explain all the changes I did (it’s not too much, just 4 boring lines), is easier to download and replace the old file by this one, or see the diff. [ADVISE: DO NOT FORGET TO BACKUP THE OLD FILE]

And Voilà, Accents and Cedilla working like a charm.

The right workaround for it is create a valid portuguese layout, but just for testing proposes you can alter the intl layout.

Ok, that is it,

Cheers!

I’m not having much time to work on my personal projects ( pychord by example ) cause I’m having a lot of tasks to do ( and to learn ) on my college and on my new job.

But I’m here to talk about pychord, so let me do it! =)

Tim wrote a lot of good suggestions on garage’s foruns. So, I’m working on their ideas now. I need to say “thanks” to Tim cause he gave me a lot of good suggestions to make pychord better. Thank you Tim!

On this last weekend I worked in “Zoom IN/OUT ” feature and change the font of the chord’s screen. I think that pychord is a little better now.

You can get it here, or do a “upgrade” on your device.

That is all!

Have a nice week!

All features (about 1.0 version) are working. Now I need to work in two different lines.

• Source Code improvement [1]
• Bug Fixes[2]

[1] I didn’t have enough knowledge about pygame when I started this project. So I need to change some parts of the code to fix wrong decisions that I made before.
[2] If you are using this application, please, give me a feedback and I will try to make it better!

Then I will start to develop the 1.1 version ( with some features that I promised before ).

In this version, I created a configuration file (/home/user/.pychord.conf), and this file has to have two simple lines:

db=/home/user/.pychord.db
datadir=/home/user/pychord/data

Where:
“db” is your DataBase file, with all your chords. Its a sqlite’s file.
“datadir” is the folder where pychord will get the chords to put into database file on update process.

You can edit these options by clicking on “i” symbol in PyChord’s first screen. You can also choose by what type of update you want: Full-update or Incremental Update. In Full-update you will lose all your database data. In incremental update pychord will get all files of your datadir and put into database.

All files in your datadir folder have to have the “.chr” extension, and have to be like this example:

Name: Music Name
Artist: Music Artist Name
D# E F
Your chords
D # E F
Your chords
D E# F
Your chords

(Two first lines are used like headers, describing the Name of the music and the name of the Artist. Followed by the chords)

Ok, its too easy right?!

So, you have to have a directory (datadir) and put all your files there. Default folder is /home/user/pychord/data. Don’t forget to update your database when you start to use this application.

So, Ok! Now you can download .install here!

If you have problems to install this application, try again by searching for it on ApplicationManager->Browse Installable Applications->others->pychord

If you have any problems after that (or suggestions), please, let me know!

[]‘s