How to try out gPodder in the Sailfish OS Emulator

You might have seen this one coming: gPodder is already working on Sailfish OS. If you want to try it out in the emulator yourself (no MP3 playback due to missing codecs, and some parts of the UI have not yet been ported), install the Sailfish SDK and start the emulator (thanks to the interpreted'ness of Python, we don't have to care about cross-compiling at this point). Then, SSH into the emulator as user "nemo" (I'm purposefully vague here - if you can't figure out how to SSH into the emulator, then you probably shouldn't be trying it out at this point).

From the "nemo" user, become root (use "su -", root password is "nemo") and then install some dependencies:

zypper in python-pyside git qt-components

With that in place, go back to the "nemo" user and get gPodder from Git:

git clone git://github.com/gpodder/gpodder.git

Then, cd into the Git checkout and start it as usual:

cd gpodder
python tools/localdepends.py
bin/gpodder

Again, you don't have to do any installation or compilation steps for gPodder - it will work straight out of a Git checkout (that's how I use it all the time). If you "export" the Emulator as appliance in VirtualBox and then "import" it on a different machine, you can even work with this nicely on Mac OS X and Windows. The fact that the emulator is just another Mer installation also means that you can install a compiler and -devel packages for quick development and testing. Vim 7.3 is already installed, I only wish zsh was also available in the Mer repos :)

MP3 playback in Nemo Mobile on the N950

If you've been playing with Nemo Mobile on your N950 recently, and wanted to do more than just swipe around the Lipstick UI, you might have noticed that while there's a music player app, it can't playback MP3 files (OGG files seem to work fine). This is a quick'n'dirty log of what I had to do to get MP3s playing (I've checked in the repos for something similar, but couldn't find it):

First, install the Mer Platform SDK:
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK

Then, get SB2 (for armv7hl, as this is what Nemo-on-N950 uses):
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK#Compiling_with_the_SDK

Then, set everything up so you can use "nemo-n950" as target with sb2:
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Platform_SDK_and_SB2

Install build dependencies (you might need more than these, use "zypper se " to search for package names):
sb2 -t nemo-n950 -m sdk-install -R zypper in gstreamer-devel gst-plugins-base-devel gst-plugins-bad-free-devel gstreamer-tools orc-devel zlib-devel

Get the gst-ffmpeg sources (use version 0.10.11, due to bug 655238):
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/gst-ffmpeg/

Extract the sources, then do:
sb2 -t nemo-n950 ./configure --prefix=/usr
sb2 -t nemo-n950 make
mkdir tmp
DESTDIR=$(pwd)/tmp/ sb2 -t nemo-n950 make install
cd tmp/
scp -r . root@192.168.2.15:/

The last step obviously assumes that your device is connected and USB networking is properly set up. And then we hear somebody say "Well, but why not package it properly?". Ok. Take this modified gst-ffmpeg.spec file (based on gst-ffmpeg.spec already included in the sources). Then build a package using:

mb build -t nemo-n950 gst-ffmpeg.spec

This will leave you with gst-ffmpeg-0.10.11-1.armv7hl.rpm in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/armv7hl which you can then scp and rpm -i to your device.

FOSDEM 2013

I attended FOSDEM 2013 in Brussels, Belgium last weekend. It was my first FOSDEM, and as such, I was quite positively surprised about the location/setting (big University with too many rooms and tracks to visit them all) and reach of the event (open source projects from every different corner you can imagine).

It was also nice to catch up with old friends from Maemo/MeeGo times like Quim, but at the same time it was impossible to say hi to everybody, as the location is so big, the event only lasts two days and everything is quite hectic and crowded. Still, I managed to meet community celebrities like rzr (of Harmattan Community Repository fame) and e-yes (of Nitdroid-on-N9 fame) in person at the event, which was really nice.

Apart from meeting people and having a good time in Downtown Belgium (so many beers to choose from), Jolla Mobile was also present at the event, and I managed to attend two talks (QML App Development and Porting Nemo to new Hardware), where I found out about Sailfish.Silica 1.0 (Jolla's Own Version of Qt Components), and Open Source Components of Jolla (really good to see Sailfish Silica open source'd and also good to see maliit and contextkit used as middleware).

The photos of the weekend, including a quick sightseeing tour on Monday as well as your usual dose of food porn can be found on Flickr.

Tetrepetete, SMS Backup and apkenv updates

Whew, January is pretty much over already, and there haven't been any updates here. So this means here's a short cumulative update of what's happened over the last few weeks:

Tetrepetete
If you are not afraid of falling blocks, and don't mind the lack of colors, give Tetrepetete a try. Not to be confused with a game of a totally different name, this game brings falling blocks of 4 to your N900 and N950/N9. While the full color version is still not available as such, the free greyscale version is up for grabs as .deb on the website. Including a cameo appearance by That Rabbit from That Rabbit Game for no good reason. Play or discuss. Or be productive. Or something.

SMS Backup GUI
Instead of rolling my own solution from scratch, I found the wonderful MeegoSMSBackupRestore project by Tony Wang, which is a command-line tool for Harmattan devices to backup and restore SMS messages (as if that wasn't clear from the application name..). It was missing a GUI, so I've added one. The announcement and download, as well as the Debian source package (.dsc, .tar.gz) are available from an Internet near you. Feel like Git? We have you covered as well.

apkenv updates
If you haven't been watching the apkenv Git repo closely (I know you haven't), you might have missed the Pandora port by crowriot, which - while not being directly useful to Maemo/MeeGo users as such - also brought improvements to the Cut the Rope module, which somehow works now. To be discussed at talk.maemo.org, and patches (as always) welcome.

In other (totally unrelated) news, the thesis is done (yay!).

gPodder 3.4.0 for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

As promised, following the 2.20.3 release for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5, a new version of gPodder 3 has been released today. This release brings some new improvements to the QML UI that should make scrolling in the episode list faster, as well as align a bit more with the Harmattan UX Guidelines.

gPodder 3.4.0 running on MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan (N9)

As always, updated packages will be available via Nokia Store once the QA process has finished. As there have been problems with apps.formeego.org recently (3.3.0 isn't even out of the staging area yet, after 3 months), we now provide a package of gPodder for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan on gpodder.org/downloads for those who want to avoid or can't use Nokia Store (you have to enable packages from unknown sources, and you might have to uninstall the previous version if it came from Nokia Store or Apps For MeeGo due to the Aegis security policy). The source and packaging is available in the "harmattan" branch in Git, as has always been the case.

I hope you like the new UI changes. If you are missing the feed update button in the lower left corner, try "pull to refresh" on the podcast list (this avoids accidental updates when pressing the back button twice). I'd like to create a nicer "pull to refresh" implementation, but the limitations of Qt 4's QML Flickable prevent me from creating a better one (if you have a better implementation than gPodder's PullDownHandle, I'd love to hear from you). Scrolling the episode list should now also be faster (than before), and some unnecessary animations were removed in the process.

gPodder 2.20.3 for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5

A new release of gPodder 2.x for Maemo 4 (aka Diablo, N800 + N810) and Maemo 5 (aka Fremantle, N900) is out, fixing YouTube-related issues (again ;).

gPodder 2.20.3 running on Maemo 4 (N810)

Packages have been uploaded to Maemo Extras, but as people have reported problems with the autobuilder, and as maemo.org seems to be moving these days, anyway (to the Hildon Foundation, apparently), we also provide for the first time since.. well, since a very long time I guess.. binary .deb packages for gPodder on Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 :)

gPodder 2.20.3 running on Maemo 5 (N900)

You can find the download links on the gPodder download page - you can directly download gPodder 2.20.3 from the web browser in both OS versions, and choose to open the .deb file with the Application Manager. Be sure to choose the right package for your device (N8x0 users choose the Maemo 4 version, N900 users choose the Maemo 5 version). Enjoy :) Next up: A new release of gPodder 3.x for Harmattan. Soon!

Billboard 1.0.7 available in Nokia Store

A new version of Billboard, the standby screen customizing app for the N9 has been released and is now available from Nokia Store. It brings some nifty features such as in-line color customization, a battery bar and a battery icon:

The full ChangeLog is available on the Billboard website.
Questions and feedback can be left in the support thread on TMO.