gPodder 2.20.2 for Maemo 4/5, gPodder 3.3.0 for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

gPodder 2.20.2 has been released today, and gPodder 3.3.0 has also been released. Version 2.20.2 is for users of Maemo 4 (N800/N810) and Maemo 5 (N900) and version 3.3.0 is for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan users (N950/N9).

The reason why another 2.x release comes out at this point in time is because YouTube downloading was broken by another website change recently, and of course we don't want to leave our good old Maemo users without their daily YouTube video fix. A full list of changes for Maemo 4 and 5 can be found in the 2.20.2 release announcement.

Version 3.3.0 for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan brings some nice features like download resuming, filters for unfinished files, scroll position improvements and display of the publish date and file size in the shownotes. Of course, 3.3.0 also includes the YouTube download fix. A full list of changes can be found in the 3.3.0 release annoucement.

As a side note, Maemo 5 support has now been completely removed from the master branch as of 3.3.0 (it has never been officially supported, but you could kind of run in on the N900 with some motivation and work). N900 users really wanting to use gPodder 3 should use it on Nemo Mobile, supporting gPodder 3 and its QML UI in Maemo 5 is just too much work, and the time working on gPodder is better spent improving the Harmattan version and making sure that the 2.x branch doesn't break.

Here's the run-down of the release status for various versions and targets:

gPodder 2.20.2 is ready for testing in Extras-Testing for Maemo 5 Fremantle.
gPodder 2.20.2 is already in Extras for Maemo 4 Diablo.
gPodder 3.3.0 has been uploaded to Nokia Store QA for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan.
gPodder 3.3.0 has also been uploaded to the MeeGo Community OBS.

HOWTO: Set up a Maemo 5 Scratchbox SDK VM (and upload packages)

I've somehow lost my good old "MaemoSDK" VirtualBox VM, so while I'm setting up the new VM, here are the instructions in case I or somebody else needs to do that again.

The goal: To have a nice VM (more lightweight than the Maemo SDK VMs offered online) that one can SSH into and build packages for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5:

1. Get the Debian i386 netinst CD image from http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
2. Create a new VirtualBox VM (Name: MaemoSDK, Operating System: Linux, Version: Debian) - the default size (8 GB) should be okay, less is also okay
3. Go to Settings, Storage, IDE Controller, select the .iso you downloaded in step 1
4. Power up the VM, select "Install" in the menu
5. Set the hostname to "maemosdk"
6. Use an empty root password (you can use "sudo" from your user)
7. Full name for the new user: Maemo Developer
8. Username for the new user: user
9. Password for the new user: maemo
10. Use the default options for partitioning, and wait until the base system is installed
11. Select the "SSH Server" option when the Debian Installer offers it
12. Install GRUB into the MBR of the VM
13. Go to the Maemo 5 SDK Download Page on Nokia Developer
14. From the SDK Download page, get the Scratchbox installer script (maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh) and the SDK installer script (maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh):

    http://repository.maemo.org/stable/5.0/maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh

    http://repository.maemo.org/stable/5.0/maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh 

15. Login to your new VM, then wget the two scripts above
16. sudo sh maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh
17. sudo sh maemo-scratchbox-install_5.0.sh -u user
18. Log out and log back in again
19. sh maemo-sdk-install_5.0.sh
20. When asked, I chose Full + Development packages, but feel free to chose a more minimal variant (in that case, you might have to install -dev packages later on as build-dependencies)

You can also read up on how to set up SSH agent forwarding in the VM, so that you don't need to store your SSH key on the SDK VM.

As for building gPodder from source in this SDK, here are the instructions:

1. scratchbox
2. vi /etc/apt/sources.list # then add these entries:
   deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel fremantle free non-free
   deb-src http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel fremantle free
3. fakeroot apt-get install python2.5 python-feedparser python-mygpoclient python-dev maemo-optify
4. git clone git://github.com/gpodder/gpodder.git
5. cd gpodder
6. git checkout origin/maemo-5
7. dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -S -sa -I.git -i.git # for the source upload
8. dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b # for the binary to test locally

You can also build the Maemo 4 (N800/N810) package by replacing "maemo-5" with "maemo-4" in the "git checkout" command.

To get files out of the SDK without setting up fancy SSH stuff, you can also just use netcat (on the target: nc -l 9999 | tar xzv, on the source: tar czv /path/to/files/ | nc a.b.c.d 9999).

To upload files to Maemo Extras, follow the instructions at Uploading to Extras.

Numpty Physics 0.3.3 for Harmattan is here

Another project that has been on the back burner for a while is the new NumptyPhysics port to Harmattan ("new" because Aapo has ported it once before). One of the most important bug fixes (avoiding the multi-touch drawing error) has been committed a month ago, and

So, this weekend, Numpty Physics 0.3.3 has been released. This version includes some basic Harmattan integration work (single-instance, swipe lock integration, pause-in-background, squircle-style icon by flopjoke, ...) that will - hopefully - allow the application to also go into Nokia Store as free app (as Apps For MeeGo is still down).

NumptyPhysics is available as download on Github, or you can wait until it gets approved by Nokia Store QA and install it via the client. It's yet another project that used the shared "harmattan" organization on Github: https://github.com/harmattan/numptyphysics - feel free to improve the code and send pull requests :) Also, please report any integration issues or minor things that could be improved for Harmattan integration on the bug tracker.