[Under vote] Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Brainstorm: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._they_can_port

I've started seeing requests asking for 'x' application to be ported; but no response by the original author. It seems to me that if we could figure out which applications have been abandoned by the original author/porter and which application a lot of people use -- it would be simpler for developers (like me) to be able to quickly port a application and get it running on Fremantle.

I don't want to step on the original authors feet if they are in the process of porting it. Or are waiting until they get a n900 to port it.

What solutions can you guys think up would work?

Nathan

Re: Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Has any author ever objected to anyone else porting their open source app? I doubt it.

Just do it!

Re: Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Hmm, thats an interesting perspective -- but let say we take the example of liqBase. I really think Gary would probably not be that happy if he built it for Diablo and had not had any time yet to move it all over to the fremantle/n900 and some other developer just grabbed it and started porting it, beating him to the punch. I'm sure Gary thinks liqBase is his baby. Gary might not have any issues with someone porting liqBase to another platform he isn't even interested in. But Gary is very interested in liqBase on the n900.

Now being another developer; I know I would not want to just "take" his project without knowing he has decided to abandon it.

Nathan

Re: Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Just ask the maintainer/author and if there is no reply do what ever you see fit.

Re: Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Something that might help a little is to make the list of apps currently in Dev and testing a bit more visible to those that dont have an N900.

I searched for ages to find the list of apps currently in testing, but still have not found ones that are in dev. There is clearly more activity going on than is currently visible.

Mike C

Re: Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

http://maemo.org/packages/repository is your friend. You have direct links to contents of all the repos in human readable form there.

Re: [Idea sandbox] Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Jeremiah is working in a tool that can solve this problem, by the information in the sprints page it's almost completed[1].

[1] - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/October_09 (9.04-08)

Re: [Idea sandbox] Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Related to this is the rather tenuous connection between garage and the repositories.

I wonder about having some kind of timeout on garage. There are a number of projects there named after the app or debian package of the app that have been abandoned. It makes little sense to keep the skeletons around.

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/uqm/

One example is uqm. I found a rudimentary and obsolete project called "uqm" in garage and assumed that was the extent of uqm for maemo. There was in fact at least one more recent and developed port of uqm.

I think it would help make it clear who is working on what, and what its progress is, if a way to expire untouched garage projects and also a way to connect garage releases to the repository package page existed.

Re: [Under vote] Ability for Developers to know which existings applications they can port
 

Only to mention that this proposal is filed Under Vote now: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...they_can_port/