Comment 1 Carsten Munk (reporter) 2010-01-14 15:42:55 UTC

CC'ing Marcell as he's the new owner of Fremantle SDK

Comment 2 Marcell Lengyel 2010-01-19 10:40:10 UTC

I am taking this.

Any progress? I would like to build kernel package with mouse and joystick
support, but without fiasco-gen it is impossible.

Comment 4 Carsten Munk (reporter) 2010-02-03 22:11:02 UTC

There's movement on this bug last I heard, but not sure of when it will be
published. 

It is not impossible, just you need to edit the source package to not call
fiasco-gen and things should be fine.

I would like to have a package with fiasco image, that flashes the kernel after
installation on the device.

Are you sure that commenting-out the fiasco-gen call will create such a
package?

Comment 6 Carsten Munk (reporter) 2010-02-03 22:25:58 UTC

(In reply to comment #5)
> I would like to have a package with fiasco image, that flashes the kernel after
> installation on the device.
> 
> Are you sure that commenting-out the fiasco-gen call will create such a
> package?
> 

Right, I would have assumed a modules package would be enough for that, and no,
it probably won't.

Comment 7 Quim Gil 2010-02-04 09:43:07 UTC

It's planned to be shipped in the next SDK update.

Would it be possible get the package (or even the sources) already before the
next update?

Comment 9 Quim Gil 2010-02-04 09:59:31 UTC

afaik we are still testing the package for external use. It will be released as
a binary.

The easiest is to release it together with the next SDK update. It shouldn't
take that long. The community has been waiting several years for this little
package to go out, I guess we can afford now just a bit more time to release it
properly.

(In reply to comment #9)
> The community has been waiting several years for this little
> package to go out, I guess we can afford now just a bit more time to release it
> properly.

Well, it's a bit different than a month ago though. With PR1.0 we were able to
build .debs and install them via repos and they would flash the kernel.
Starting with PR1.1 fiasco-gen was required as part of the kernel build
process.

Basically we could build good kernel .debs before and now we can't.

I thought things like this would be *urgently* fixed. It's very disappointing
to see how casually it is all done.

Previously I was building many kernel .debs, including one that wound up
solving why so many Nokia customers were getting bricks. These kernels were
also used by others to do such things as NAT. I was also trying various
patches, using it under Mer to help with development there, etc.

This was 100% halted when I went to build the PR1.1 kernel. I figured it would
be a simple update of the kernel source. But you changed how the kernel image
is packaged as well, and added the fiasco-gen as a build dependency. So now
we're screwed.

Now we're told to be patient because we've already waited a long time?

See this gem of a thread were the whole thing sounds like it is about to be
open:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2008-December/001396.html

That's from 2008....

Anyway, since PR1.1 I haven't made any kernels for maemo. Yay!

Comment 11 Marcell Lengyel 2010-02-04 14:19:59 UTC

I am taking this.

Comment 12 Marcell Lengyel 2010-02-04 15:55:14 UTC

Created an attachment (id=2214) [details]
fiasco-gen binary package

Here is a preview of the fiasco-gen package that will be part of the next SDK
update.

* I built and installed new kernel .debs with the fiasco-gen attached to this
bugreport.

* I was able to do the build fine.

* The install via `apt-get upgrade` *appeared* to work and flash the kernel.

* The kernel boots up.

* It gets to showing the "dots" for awhile, then goes black, then powers off.

I think it's actually not flashing *my* kernel but still booting up the old
one, however. Mine was compiled with framebuffer console, but the kernel that
boots up doesn't show the console.

So there *may* be a problem that it is not flashing the kernel on the device
correctly. I still need to prod further, but I thought I would let you know...

Here is my live kernel scratchbox, fwiw:
http://www.freemoe.org/users/jebba/scratchbox/kernel/

thank you Marcell!

I was able to successfully build and flash a custom kernel.
It works flawlessly so far.
see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=43420

I believe I have problems with my .postinst files, so take comment #13 as a
half VERIFY (e.g. you can build with it).

Ok, postinst sorted out, so I can VERIFY that the fiasco-gen attached here
works. I was able to `apt-get upgrade` and install my new kernel fine.

Now where's the ticket to free this critical piece of software? :)

Comment 17 Quim Gil 2010-02-05 07:41:02 UTC

(In reply to comment #16)
> Now where's the ticket to free this critical piece of software? :)

Now you have the binary (thanks Marcell for taking the shortcut), enjoy it!

Carsten is sort of maintaining a list of priorities for opening components. Do
you mind coming back to this topic, say, in few months if you still think it's
needed?

Why a few months? Not now?

I wonder how releasing fiasco-gen as binary can be compatible with the GPL
license of the kernel. After all, the GPL requires that whenever you ship a
binary blob of any kind that is a derivative work of a GPL'd source, you need
to provide recipients everything (including build tools) to create that very
same binary blob. Exempt from this are only tools that are "normally
distributed [...] with the major components [...] of the operating system".
fiasco-gen obviously does not fall under this exemption.

Comment 20 Carsten Munk (reporter) 2010-02-16 09:48:09 UTC

Fiasco-gen was published in PR1.1.1 SDK, now in non-free in SDK. Proposing to
close bug.

Comment 21 Marcell Lengyel 2010-02-16 10:27:04 UTC

Setting to Fixed

Comment 22 Marcell Lengyel 2010-02-16 10:27:28 UTC

And closing