Hi there!

So I got a new computer, why am I even talking about it? Because now I’ll have to set up everything I have on the new box.

To start with, the box is a Lenovo ThinkPad T520 with a clean Ubuntu 11.04, amd64 install.

For the record, 10.10 just won’t work with the T520, apparently all that sand in the bridge makes the old ubuntu skid and fall to death. After installing 317Mb of updates, upgraded to 11.04, disabled Unity (after a horrid 30 minute trial; don’t wanna talk about it now..) and finally started doing something useful.

Ok, now let’s get to the useful part, this post will mostly be just a collection of links anyway.

QtSDK; follow the instructions on that page to run the installer. Run the custom installation and select, under Experimental, Harmattan  (I picked both the Remote Compiler  and the Qt Quick Components for Symbian ones too..). I`d recommend getting Qt`s sources here too. Installation takes a long time so don’t bother and take yourself some coffee time.

Harmattan Scratchbox: Even though most of the work/development for the N9(|50) can be done through the QtSDK, one’s quite locked in there. I highly recommend using scratchbox for many reasons. Among them:

  1. makes it really easy to compile/build a generic linux package to harmattan. Many times you can take a package’s source from ubuntu/devian, build it inside scratchbox (with the proper target – HARMATTAN_ARMEL – set) and you’ll have a working .deb for Harmattan even if it’s got nothing to do with Qt. Building a .deb within QtSDK for a package that doesn`t use qmake just doesn’t make sense and will probably be a PITA.
  2. Makes the task of packaging comprehensible and “clean” without too many black magic (if you are familiar with debian packages, you`ll feel at home).
  3. Using the HARMATTAN_X86 target you can test your application/package/sw in an equivalent (but compiled to your pc`s own native architecture) environment that really works and has got all the harmattan qt quick components. QEMU is just unusable for me.

Basically, if you consider using anything further than Qt/QML pure apps, you`ll probably need it. If you didn’t get anything I said above, forget this whole guide and go do something else.

A very good guide on how to set Scratchbox up is here . The guide is pretty good and the python script there is pure magic.

Finally this article explains really well how to use scratchbox.

This is basically all you need to start..

Back to work now! 😀