[Jaffa Software]

Tuesday 30 January 2007

MUD ports of existing packages

keesj asked an interesting question: how do you approach people who've already ported packages to Maemo and say you want to convert them to MUD-Builder? Most packages aren't in the extras repository, so auto-upload to that from MUD is the most immediate and obvious benefit.

My reply included a couple of sample messages; one for the upstream author, which is a bit boring, and one for the current Maemo maintainer:

I've seen your $PACKAGE port to Maemo and though I'd try to add it to the MUD auto-builder. This would allow the Maemo-specific packaging to be done automatically, the upstream source to be tracked and it automatically added to the Maemo Extras repository when it is updated.

I was wondering if you'd mind me doing this packaging, or whether you'd like to take a look? Producing a MUD package is straight forward and means you can concentrate on porting stuff, rather than producing packages.

If you don't mind me adding the package, did you patch the package at all for Maemo? If so, would you mind sharing the patch?

Any suggestions or comments would be very much appreciated. Either here or on the mud-builder mailing list.

P.S. Ferenc re-invited me to the extras upload facility, and my GPG key is now accepted. First MUD-built packages should be uploaded tomorrow!

Monday 29 January 2007

Resizing GPE Calendar on OS 2007

OS 2007 - as introduced on the N800 - lets you resize home screen applets. The default size of the GPE Calendar, IMHO, is too large and although it can be recompiled to shrink the size, it can also be resized dynamically on OS 2007.

As root:

Nokia-N800-51:~# cat >>/usr/share/applications/hildon-home/gpe-calendar-home.desktop <<EOM
X-home-applet-resizable=XY
X-home-applet-minwidth=230
X-home-applet-minheight=40
EOM

Restart your device and edit your layout to suit.