Some upcoming MeeGo architecture changes

Arjan van de Ven, one of the key MeeGo architects, posted to meego-architecture Given the events of the last few weeks, the MeeGo architects have, and still are, revisiting various parts of the MeeGo architecture. While I'd love to say that we have the whole situation clear, the reality is that there still is a very complex situation. In part because just not everything is clear yet around "who" and "what", and in part because various parts of the MeeGo OS architecture are very tightly coupled... it's not like MIkkado where you can pull out one stick at a time.

Having said that, three items are currently clear enough to make a final decision on:

1) MSSF / MeeGo security framework

2) Buteo Sync

3) PIM storage (currently stored in the tracker database) The thread took on two main topics: firstly, what was the process by which this was decided; why weren't the discussions held in the open? Secondly, questioning the decision with regards to Tracker, given that the developers weren't aware of the concerns listed by Arjan.

A strong undercurrent of the thread revealed the tensions between Intel and Nokia, with Nokia being seen as slow to respond and a struggle to cooperate with on an open source project.

Proof-of-concept shows a way Qt on iOS might be implemented

Eike Ziller has pushed a proof-of-concept for a Lighthouse plugin which is UIKit based. Lighthouse is the next-generation engine for Qt in embedded devices, and UIKit is Apple's user-interface technology for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. Eike writes, this means that, if you carefully follow the instructions in the accompanying README file (in src/plugins/platforms/uikit/ of the qt-lighthouse repo), you should be able to build (parts of) Qt for iOS Simulator and Device targets, and run a few simple example Qt Quick applications. I can’t emphasize enough that this is not a real port to iOS though, and is not supported in any way. Chances are that many parts of Qt don’t work, even the parts that do compile, not to speak of the parts that I didn’t even try to compile. That said, the goal of the little project was to get some simple QML applications running on a iPhone to check if Lighthouse is technically up to the task, and because QML is so cool technology. Having iOS as a Qt target would mean developers could write large parts of an application which worked on Maemo, Symbian, MeeGo, Android and iOS. A very enticing suggestion, for your editor at least.

QML Components for desktop Qt

Jens Bache-Wiig has posted a video showing Qt Quick Components' widget library running on the desktop: Qt Quick has been the main focus of Nokia for some time now. I wanted to see if we could bring some of the fun and joy of working with QML to the good old desktop. It is true that you can easily make your own widgets with Qt Quick, but obviously not everyone wants to do that. Having personally invested quite a bit of time in developing among others the GTK+ and Vista styles in Qt, I also wanted to prove that we could make use of that effort even in the brave new world of Qt Quick. One of the advantages of Qt has always been its cross-platformness. Developers being able to use the same Qt Quick technologies on the desktop, without sacrificing UI consistency, will be a big step forward.

camera-ui2 - a re-implementation of Nokia's closed source camera app

Nicolai Hess has been working on a re-implimentation of Nokia's closed-source camera-ui application: camera ui2. I made a clone of the builtin camera application and need some testers. This is for testing only at the moment. [...] You should at least know how to disable Open source replacements for Nokia closed-source software are always big boons for the Community SSU, as not only do they eliminate most licensing issues, but they allow the community to developers to fix bugs and add features compared to Nokia's closed, unsupported software. Although the source isn't currently available, plans seem to be to put it up somewhere soon.

If you want to help test, camera-ui2 currently only available as a tarball forum attachment, so it's not for the faint of heart.