Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

Just sent a mail to maemo-developers warning about removal of gtk+ stock icons:

FYI,

Starting from gtk+2.0 2.6.4-1.osso75 the builtin GTK_STOCK_* default
icons will be removed in order to save precious memory. It should have
little impact on applications, stock menu items and buttons will simply
not display the icon which is supposed to be optional anyway.

However if your application is relying on having a stock icon visible
(such as in the toolbar) those instances need to be updated. There are
plenty of funnily named icons in the platform for you to use, and in the
worst case you can always package your own icons.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

This message was brought to you by the performance police. The builtin
stock icons compiled in the gtk+ library are causing extra >30k dynamic
memory consumption regardless of whether they're ever used. In 770 all
icons are coming from the icon theme anyway, so this is a cheap and
simple optimization to do. And everyone loves to have better
performance, right? :)

First snow! Although by the time I got out to see it it was indistinguishable from slush. Oh well, I decided to ride to work anyway, mentally prepared for slippery roads. But that was unnecessary, I got to work just fine… at least to the garage. 5m before the bicycle rack there was a trickle of water, I was turning while riding over it and there we go. They weren’t kidding when they put that Slippery when wet warning sign on the ramp. It was like ice, and I should know, I’ve done the same mistake on ice as well.

Come on now. Where’s the fun in hacking the 770 if we provide you with all the details? If you can’t get root on your own maybe we’ll have to start collecting the devices back as you’re not worthy 😉

One thing to remember about the SDK image is that it’s not the same as in the product. It’ll have the terminal and ssh and other development essentials, but there won’t be any applications. It’s a tradeoff.

Ever wondered why your code changes seem to have absolutely no effect? I encountered a new variation to the theme recently. The reasons below are old, I’ve done every one of those mistakes myself and seen several people repeat at least one or more:

• forgetting to save the file before compiling
• running make install in different directory
• running the binary from different directory
• forgetting to run make install before running the installed application

But that’s just when you’re writing applications. When you’re working on libraries there are even more ways to get all confused, I learned.
Two more things to pay attention to:

• make sure the libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 link points to the right library (and not the libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.600.4.orig copy you made just in case)
• check that valgrind isn’t actually a wrapper shell script conveniently prepending /usr/lib/debug to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH

The first case seems to happen because ldconfig isn’t too bright, it’ll just happily update the link to point wherever when run during package/library installation. Usually I just do cp .libs/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.600.4 /usr/lib to save time and also to avoid such issues.

The second point was another surprise, though quite understandable in retrospect. /proc/$PID/maps of course had the explanation why the abort() I had planted in the middle of everything was doing nothing whatsoever. All I should’ve done was to have a look.

So the obviously missing NULL-check was the right fix after all. I was just running the wrong damn library when testing and went on to a wild goose chase. I’ve had better days.

Evolution of The FAQ:

1. Aieeee!
2. The Question Which Shall Not Be Asked Here
3. How to get a shell on 770?

The answer to the last one is that you use the Application Installer to install a terminal application. The package needs to be specially crafted though, you can’t just install any random Debian packages. You can find the HOWTO: Making a package for the Application Installer from maemo.org.

I bet the next popular question will be How do I get root? 🙂

Update: Then again…

<cjb> Oh, my. My housemate has cracked the root password. That took.. thirty-nine seconds.

Ha!

So we finally started shipping devices to those accepted in the developer program. Soon after crispin and others announcing their devices being in the mail already, people started to whine it’s not shipping in the US yet. Oh, silly americans…

I knew someone would forgot one of the smaller countries. Or maybe things are just caught in red tape or something.

<JussiP> Damn, for a second there I felt like asking The Question Which Shall Not Be Asked Here. The delays make me twitchy. 🙂

Some things just start to live a life of their own. On the bright side hardly anyone is bringing up Aieeee anymore…

Mind if I play with your MP3 player?

My hardware just seems to suck a little bit less now.

During GNOME Summit my wireless worked flawlessly the whole time, even though I’m using an ancient ipw2100 driver and an even older 2.4 kernel. Even USB in my laptop seems to be working for a change. I managed to download the pictures off my phone and disable the USB host mode from my 770 (I think it’s responsible for draining the battery much faster than expected.)

Before the summit I left my bike for repairs. Being nice to customers they called me – around 5am – first to get permission to replace the chains and rear wheels and later to notify me the bike was ready to pick up. So right after landing I picked it up and went for a short ride. Felt all wobbly and weird. I must’ve been jet-lagged as everything felt OK the next day. Must be in better condition than in ages, hope it stays that way at least another 7000km.

Had also little fun with my bike light. It wouldn’t turn on, no matter how hard I kept hitting it. Hitting used to work last year 😉 The light is way over-engineered I noticed. There are at least half a dozen surface mounted components among other things. Took a while to see one transistor had a broken base.

Ended up sticking a bundle of paper inside the casing to add pressure to the broken base to keep it connected with the solder. Low-tech solutions rule! Whatever happened to simple battery-wire-bulb devices?

On the bright side tinkering with the light took long enough that by the time I was done the raining had stopped 🙂

On the software side kris claims to have the treeview/model/sort/filter -combo working better than ever!

It was good to finally meet Crispin, Philip and of course also Marco and others. I can already almost hear Crispin talking when reading his blog. Maybe that’ll help with public speaking a bit. Next year you’ll blow our minds with a flashy demo, right? 🙂

Many thanks to all who have donated to galeon, it helped to get Crispin there.