I have my application written, and I've tested it and verified that it is working properly, so now I'm trying to build a package that will install under the Application Manager. I've read the Debian New Maintainers' Guide, and the How To titled "Making a package for the Application Manager in maemo 3.x", and downloaded the example Hello World application, and after a bit of trial and error I've managed to build a .deb package for my application. If I copy this to a memory card, and then insert this into my N800 and run it, the Application Manager recognises the package and successfully installs it.
The trouble is, the application does not appear anywhere in the menu of available applications, so cannot be activated by the user. It's not listed under Web, or Contact, or Utilities, or Games, or Tools, or with things like Media Player or File Manager. Nor does it appear anywhere that File Manager can show me. The problem I'm having now is understanding what I'm supposed to do to fix this. Having looked at all of the documentation I've listed above, I began reading the How To titled "How to write a new application to maemo 3.x". This appears to show a completely different folder hierarchy to the one that is in the Hello World example. I've tried following its instructions for creating a .desktop and .service file for my application, and I've rebuilt my .deb package with these in place. All I've managed to achieve so far, though, is make the right icon appear next to the application in the Application Manager. I still don't get the application's icon appearing anywhere in the Navigator, so I can't fire it up to see if anything else works. My biggest problem is that all of the instructions I've read so far insist on giving me examples, and I can't pick out which things are relevant to me and which are not. The various Makefiles and so on list all kinds of things that are clearly irrelevant to me, and I've no idea how closely I have to stick to the folder hierarchy shown in the "How to write a new application to maemo 3.x" instructions. Also, I'm unsure whether I'm supposed to set up a Makefile.am script to ensure that "something" gets done with the .desktop and .service files. Do these get automatically recognised and dealt with, or do I have to tell the installer what to do with them? (In which case, it would be nice to read a proper explanation of what has to happen to them. Examples are fine if they are directly applicable to what you are trying to do. If they aren't 100% applicable, they are useless because they don't provide any proper context for deciding what I need to do in my particular case.) Also, do I need to write code to make my application integrate with the Navigator? I seem to remember reading something about some kind of calling interface, but it wasn't clear when I read it whether it was relevant to what I needed to do (and, in fact, I now can't find it among the various documentation pages). Any offers of help? Or is this going to be another of my questions that disappears into a black hole never to get answered? I should add that I'm writing this application on behalf of a customer, and from the outset neither of us were sure that the N800 was a good platform to target. After all the difficulties I've had in finding accurate and complete information, and the lack of response I've been getting to the questions I've been posing on this mailing list, I'm inclined to suggest to them that we were right, and that we should stick to more mature technology in future. The N800 is an interesting piece of kit, but without MUCH better documentation and properly integrated development tools, it is too expensive to write for and more trouble than it's worth. David Hazel _______________________________________________ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
