[Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

As you may have already noticed in the recent Meeting Minutes, current Council is about to prepare a Coding Competition (CC) for 2016. In times like these, without Nokia or any other corporate entity sponsoring prizes/devices, there are of course limited resources for big giveaways. Nevertheless we believe the approach is worth it. :) We are relying on your donations.





Looking at last CC's, this time it will probably be more of the supportive kind than rival in the first place. Basically we want to support the ongoing AND future software development in a way that ideally, the winners will get the "right" devices to carry on their efforts or even to the next level (e.g. cross-platform).



Now since no current Councilor has ever arranged a CC, we would like to hear your thoughts on how to get it "right", satisfying community demands (SW) as well as individual developer demands (HW). Please share your ideas! And if you've been involved in organizing recent CC's and are willing to help, please holler. And we sure need help in having an uptodate wiki page.



Furthermore, we are calling all owners of now unused devices to consider donating* them for this CC, respectively to MC e.V., who will be responsible for collecting donations and funds. Especially we are looking at those that got rewarded in recent CC's or device programs (N950 anyone? ;)).

* or selling them for a reasonable price.

The voting webinterface will be the same as for the Maemo Council elections, so jury will be you. We also need you to scrutinize the submitted code (ideally installable/executable + binary). It is undecided yet wether or not to accept closed source apps. As the Council is organizing this CC, it will only intervene if a need occurs. Please help make sure conditions and rules are distinct.



Ideas for categories:

- Old NIT‘s |---New released apps only |---Completed |--- |---

- Fremantle |--- |--- |---

- Harmattan |--- |--- |---

- Sailfish OS |--- |--- |---

- "Port it/cross-platform" |--- |--- |---

- "Maintain it" (packages, CSSU) |--- |--- |---

- "Update/Fix it" |--- |--- |---

- "Bugfix it" (known, yet unresolved bugs) |--- |--- |---

- Core development or "Free it" (backport, clone, replace or supersede closed packages) |--- |--- |---

- Recent contributions (recent major releases) |--- |--- |---

- Wishlist (rewarded if/when completed) |--- |--- |---

- Beginner (first release) |--- |--- |---



A variant could be to have category "Update/Fix it" for each of the 4 device categories if it can be expected to have enough entries (and prizes).

Ideas and suggestions welcome. :)



Link: Original article.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

<reseved for future comments>

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Good plan - I know from the GP2X/Pandora community competitions can be really fun and a great motivator for devs.
Is it possible to make categories and donations per device?

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I still have my N900 which got me into coding and development so it holds a special place in my heart. But actually it was the wonderful community that made owning N900 a great thing. Also, without TMO I don't think I would ever become a software engineer.

It is time for me to pay back. This wonderful community deserves more applications so I would like to develop new applications for N900. However I must say I have no experience writing app(lication)s for Fremantle or any other mobile Linux distro. I have made a bunch of apps for iOS/Android/WP8 though.

What is the path I need to take nowadays to create apps for Fremantle? The C++ language shouldn't be a problem for me as I will pick it up since I have experience with OOP languages like C#, Java and Objective-C but I need some advice on the use frameworks. There are some forum posts/wiki pages on setting up Qt but I think they are outdated. Things must have been changed while I was away from TMO.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Well, currently Qt no longer supports Maemo in any manner, but the SDKs for Qt4 (which do support Maemo) can still be found. In particular, this site:

ftp://ftp.informatik.hu-berlin.de/pu...l.no/QT/qtsdk/

has most of the Qt4 SDKs (I just checked, and they are still there).

If you are planning to go the Qt route for writing Fremantle apps, the SDK gives you a great head-start: it comes loaded with dozens of simple example apps for the N900, and a wealth of documentation.

One caveat: as Nokia's servers have been down for a long time now, and Qt itself no longer provides on-line support for Qt4 SDKs, you'll need to get the version of the SDK installer that has everything built-in to it. So, the "offline" installer is the one you want. Moreover, version 1.1.1 was the last version of the SDK that had the Maemo toolchain built-in, so you'll want to get that one. So, for example, if you want to run the SDK on a Windows machine, you'd choose the file:

Qt_SDK_Win_offline_v1_1_1_en.exe

Similar choices go for Mac or Linux, just replacing "Win" with a different identifier.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Or more simple, just grab a VM fully prepared by endsormeans or halftux.
Links to follow (or just do a search)...

For information:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=95387
For short info and download:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...78#post1472078

Or:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...0&postcount=57
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=95806

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I would like to see a little emphasis on fixing some most wanted/popular packages from Extras.
We have a host of broken packages in our repos that possibly only need a bit of TLC.
Most people would prefer to go there own direction when designing an application, I can fully understand that.

But take into consideration that someone may have thought about your idea in Maemo's past leaving a half working package in the repos that just needs a little love.

Take a look through the existing packages, see if you can contact the maintainer (e-mail etc), ask if you could be a maintainer. If you get no answer techstaff and CC maybe able to do that provided your package is QA'ed first.

Also have a look at the wiki there is a raft of information there for developers.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Or do like me, forget the SDK and code directly on the phone.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

That is quite a good idea.
Do you have a list of affected packages?

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Not really there are packages even in Extras with mysterious undiagnosed issues.

I started a working list of "known broken packages" while I had time to package test, but please don't treat this as a list of packages that need fixing exclusively.

Some are not worth messing with at all, some would be nice to have working again. There are many more that I imagine should be added here.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_SSU/...roken_packages

These are all tested on the latest CSSU Stable before being added.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

In order to estimate your resonance to this endevour, we added a poll: "Will you participate in this coding competition?"

Please share your thoughts.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I aswered the poll as "no, but I'd like to help other devs" because I don't feel entitled to participate since I am running the arrangements of the competition :D

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

We know it is christmas / holiday / new year's time :)
But we need your input to make this competition happen and successful/fun!

So going to BUMP ...

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Since the thread is almost sleeping, i may suppose that community needs a new approach to competitions...
This would mean that a poll is not enough to describe your points of view.

During the last years, the web and the web's communities are changed a lot,
there are new ways to create and new ways to collect money for new ideas or projects.

An example:
Someone could say - "Hey guys, i would pay XX euros if someone would create an app to manage BLABLABLA...who would pay something for the same app? Can we create a competition starting from this? How much can we collect?"


Please be creative. Write down your ideas.
We are community and we can decide what is important for us.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

like, crowdfund prizes for a competition?

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I think xes meant something like this. The OP has edited the post, thus losing the continuity to some extent, but basically the whole thread was a case of a number of people requesting a feature and agreeing to pay for it together. And it was done.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Hi All!

I voted no, but I would help if I can (with donation too). I'm not a dev at all; I know python a little but creating little apps in python is just a hobby for me.

So. I thought maybe we can just collect ideas what applications do the community miss in which platform.
I use n900 on a daily basis and... I do not know what I miss... :) OK, that would be awsome if FCam or BlessN900 could take photos not just with 1 second but 30 seconds maybe or infinity :) Maybe it is the API or I don't know...
Still... I do not utilize half of my device's capabilities... I do not know who or what kind of people still use n900 but maybe not all of them are computer experts so their needs are maybe differ from yours/ours.

I could imagine that modest is faster. Maybe a better browser would be great (I know that there are tryings...). Modrana is so-so cool and very handy fo me. Being able to run debian/ubuntu/kali chroot... f#&@ing awsome. Maybe a newer python version would be great... So... maybe an up to date device would be great with FULL portrait support :) Do not get it wrong: I'm so-so thankful for all of you who still care...!

So I would collect ideas, missing functions etc. first and then arrange the competition. We could vote for these missed functions and the devs should ship a solution for that. Ok, this means that maybe only one or two app or function is developed at the same time but we could vote for the best. This is maybe a help for the devs too because if someone could write any app who would decide that "this or that is better or more useful"...?

Cheers,

jm

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I was not here for the previous coding competitions and may have gotten it wrong but my impression was that developers coded what they liked and users would then nominate and/or vote for applications from the pool. I must say I quite like that format. If the "developers code what they like" stage happens to match some of the apps from the wish list then all the better but I am not 100% convinced it should be enforced.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Yes, you nailed it there. This is how it happens, and discussing other related excercises is outside the scope of this thread.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I would hopefully take part in Coding Competition, but I doubt I will have time+willpower to do so.

I have several N900s (various microUSB issues, and other problems, like replace-flex-ribbon, or will-replacing-LCD-display-fix-it) and one cyan N9 (sim tray jumping out because of slightly bent corner; SIM tray is new, but SIM contacts inside of device may be slightly rusty; should check with a SIM card before sending it off) and one N950 (sim port broken entirely, microUSB is in excellent condition) to be considered for donations to winners (all have screen protectors, but I would rather fix-hardware and flash-them and check they work without any wifi or cellular issues before sending them out).

It could be possible to make "Donate" threads in Buy-and-Sell section, like "I am looking for a developer to donate this device to, here are photos of device, what app did you develop-or-improve recently" or "I am a developer, I desperately need new device to port-or-continue-developing-my-app, here is the app and its source code". But Coding Competition sounds more Eye-Catching than separate threads, and community-voting-for-winners is more interesting than individuals deciding whom to donate device to.

My interest in Coding Competition would be on fixing-improving-upgrading-old-apps, and making sure they are GTK+Hildon, and seamlessly integrated into the system (like, Belltower using system-wide map-handler, akin to address-book, instead of calling out for Google Maps). For example, Navit has a GTK+ GUI, but it's not touch-friendly, it's not hildon-ised.

For example, in Games category the _only_ app which attempts to emulate Nokia's design is maemosweeper , it just needs some improvements.

[Edit] Voted Undecided in the poll [/Edit]

Thank you. Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

This is also how would I like to take part - most probably by adding some substantial improvements to modRana, as I have done before in some of the previous competitions (for example offline routing support has been added as part of the most recent competition back in 2012). :)

If only new apps would be accepted I'm much less likely to take part in the competition due to ongoing projects.

Making it more likely that people take part in the competition
I have an idea that might help get more (especially not long-term Maemo) developers interested in the competition - what about getting the various developer tooling and library upgrades to a usable state ? Or at least properly document the most important of them in a single place.

For example there are various updated components:

• GCC 4.6 in some form
• GCC 4.8.1 in some form
• GCC 5, but only for Diablo/Maemo 4 (?)
• Python 2.7
  
• Python 3.x
• Qt 5.x

But I'm afraid that most of this is still not really production ready, or at least not without all users each manually performing various steps on their N900s before they can run an application making use of the new tools and libraries.

This effectively means that developers willing to join the competition would have to work with really outdated GCC (IIRC Autobuilder has GCC 4.2!!), Python 2.5, an old Q4 version with QtQuick 1.1, etc. They also can't make use of new GCC features, can't use modern Python, can't use Qt 5, can't use PyOtherSide, etc... At least as they actually want people to be able to run their apps. Not to mention the spotty availability of the SDK, fragile autobuilder, finding a distro that can run Python 2.5 these days, etc.

This issues might not be a problem for long term Maemo 5 application developers, as they are already setup & know the existing Maemo 5 technologies and their limitations.

But if we want newcomers with developers experience from other (more up to date) platforms, people porting stuff from outer platforms or even just cross platform application developers to take part in the competition, then I think something really needs to be done about the outdated tooling and library situation. Or else all those people will most likely just throw in the towel.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I would say everything which helps maemo to be up to date, bug free, extend features and application should be rewarded through the coding competition.
We need only to make specific categories.
And if there is some donations for prices we could also weight the categories. For example when we also add a categorie for writing wiki pages it is less work, so less weight. But we could involve more people from the community who are no developers.

I think in general one problem we have is the amount of developers and the good developers who have the knowledge to work on everything are to busy or have others priorities. And in the past the developers are not growing they are getting less:(

So here is the motivation for all developers. We need you to keep maemo alive. And would be nice to see maemo on other hardware. I think that in the future more people will get disappointed about the mass products which are limiting, make life more painful and spying your social life and consuming behavior.
When this happens we need to be ready to have a more up to date maemo and more hardware to attract people who are looking for an alternative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

I will participate the cc. However due to my knowledge and available time I can't push maemo to a new level such as I would like to do.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

A suggestion for an entry.
It seems it may be possible to allow downgrading n9 (N950?) firmware, by inserting old certs, extracted from mtd partition. At least @feuerplatz seems to have succeeded in doing so.

It would be cool to have an application developed, which could extract all older certs from mtd, store them, and the write (from user choice) a desired older cert to cal area in mtd partition. Thus allowing those who accedentially flashed Chinese SW to 'downgrade' and reflash other region firmware.

see this post from feuerplatz
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...0&postcount=33

I could try, but believe we have more skilled devs here on the N9 than myself.

As a side-note. I will personally try to dig up a good reward (besides those devices already promised) to anyone who successfully completes such a task. Idea for price Jolla phone ;) or perhaps another N900 ? let me know.

Best
NielDK (Niel Nielsen)

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

as martink suggested, i would like to see gcc upgrade. At least a 4.8.x release, built to support stock and thumb with support for as many languages as possible, especially fortran so i can finally try to finish jasper port.

i *might* have a look at this myself, depending on time and complexity.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Ahoy!:)

We (Council) have been talking in previous meetings about making this Coding Competition happen. Biggest issue at the moment is quite low participation and feedback from you, Community.

So, if you are considering to participate in Coding Competition somehow, e.g. developing, fixing, porting, updating, supporting/helping others, have something to donate, have something on your wishlist, want to learn to code and make your first app or anyhow what is related to CC, please vote the poll and/or reply to this thread about your thoughts. :)

We need your feedback to know if we should do this and how we should do this.(I think we all want it to happen:) )

So huge BUMP to this thread, hopefully some discussion will take place.

PS. This still applies...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CommunityCouncil (Post 1492061) We are relying on your donations.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Thanks for bumping the thread.

As I said at the Council meeting, I vote for reducing the number of categories. Preferably to just one.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Oh, and I am happy to contribute €20 towards the prizes. Maybe more if you can wait a couple of months. I am a bit tight on cash right now.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Thanks pichlo. :) I will join you and also contribute towards prizes!

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I am eagerly waiting for this competition to happen. Will try to contribute, either financially or by coding.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Hmmm... depending on *when* it is going to happen, I'll try to work on my MeeTeleGram app for this competition. Or, I might be able to participate in updated tooling too.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

I would be more than happy to contribute some money for prizes.

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

https://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Cod...mpetition_2016
https://together.jolla.com/question/...starting-line/

congrats! great job!

edit: now to be found on http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1517598

Re: [Council] Coding Competition 2016
 

Had some requests to merge or something, doesn't make sense to me;
But now that we have links to all active elements of this project in joerg_rw's post;
The purpose of this thread seems to have run its course, will lock it now.